Fall Apart
by fairwinds09
Summary: A re-write of 5x09. Olivia finds out she's pregnant, and does what comes naturally...she runs. An exploration of what could have been.
1. Out

Chapter 1: Out

A/N: This is my first-ever fic for Scandal, and it has been a wild and crazy ride. I have loved this show for a while now, but in the process of re-watching Seasons 1-5 so I could properly binge-watch Season 6 on Netflix, I had this sudden compulsion to create a lovely AU universe mid-season 5 in which Olivia does not have an abortion, the team comes back together full force, and shenanigans ensue. Thus, this fic was born.

Please note that this is no way signifies a problem with Olivia's right to choose, and I applaud Shonda's decision to tackle something so bold in a primetime show (even if, personally, it gutted me to watch). I also think that, in terms of characterization, this was absolutely a choice that made sense for Olivia, given her deep-seated issues with family and parenthood in general. If Eli and Maya Pope were my parents, I'd be screwed up about kids too. However, even though it wouldn't have worked with the timeline of the show, I also think that Olivia running away to deal with the problem is a logical choice.

I hope you enjoy this, and that you find it more or less in character. This fic is just as much about Olivia's relationship with her team as it is about her relationship with Fitz. Although she loves Fitz passionately (and yes, they are my OTP, always), she loves her team just as fiercely. It's part of what makes her so incredibly amazing.

Final note, because this is getting absurdly long-I picked the title "Fall Apart" for a number of reasons. Firstly, because that's exactly what's happening with Fitz and Olivia during Season 5, despite their best intentions. Secondly, because that's what they tend to do without each other (poor babies can't be happy, ever). Thirdly, because I was listening to the soundtrack of Hamilton for the jillionth time, and the lyrics to "Dear Theodosia" popped into my head all of a sudden:

"When you smile, I fall apart  
And I thought I was so smart..."

So, kudos to Lin-Manuel for being the beautiful genius that he is, and thanks for all the baby feels. Here goes!

* * *

She's sitting on the edge of the bed, turning the little plastic strip over and over in her hands. The reality of it keeps battering at the edges of her brain, searching for a point of entry, and she realizes that she has curled into herself as if the danger is here in the room, in front of her. It can't be happening, can't be happening to her, it's not possible, how could she-?

She doesn't know how long she sits there, how long she stares at those two lines that have abruptly, inexplicably changed her entire life. It seems impossible, for something so tiny to have such an enormous impact. At one point she wonders what she'll do if he comes back from his meeting early, catches her here with the damning evidence still in her hands. She doesn't move, though. Not yet.

Finally, she hears her phone buzz in the other room, a text message coming through, and that's what snaps her out of it. Quickly, numbly, she gets up and grabs a suitcase from her closet. She's in the middle of neatly rolling a camisole when she realizes that it will easier if she has backup. Slowly, she picks up the phone by their bedside.

"Abby?" she says quietly into the receiver. "Abby, I know things are...things are…" she trails off on a sigh. "But...I need you. Here. Now."

It's time to run.

* * *

Abby's the one who arranges everything, who slips her luggage past the Secret Service agents, who calls Huck and Quinn and sets the plan in motion. Olivia just packs, packs with clinical neatness, shoes and suits and blouses rolled and folded and slipped into garment bags. She leaves a few things, the ones she doesn't have room for. She refuses to think of Fitz staring into the near-empty closet, looking at the rubble of their attempt to make a life together. She refuses to think at all, just moves like an automaton. It's easier that way.

She's gone within two hours (such a short amount of time to tear down everything she's created), walks out past the guards arm in arm with Abby, smiles brightly, all teeth and sparkle, laughs a little as they talk of lunch plans and the possibility of mimosas in the middle of the day. They don't drop the facade until they're in the car, Huck at the wheel, and she drops into the seat boneless-no fight left in her. She doesn't ask where they're going.

Abby rides with them to the airport, waits until the car stops on the tarmac beside the private plane that Huck and Quinn somehow managed to find within a two-hour time frame, and then she takes Olivia's face in her hands and holds it, thumbs stroking over her cheekbones. Olivia stares into her eyes, her friend who has just moved heaven and earth for her, and wishes she could cry.

"Are you sure this is what you want, Liv?" she asks, and Olivia nods dumbly.

"All right," Abby says, doubt leaching into her voice. Then she visibly straightens her spine, nods once, all business. "All right. What do you want me to tell him?"

"Tell him you don't know where I am," and her voice is so raw, she almost doesn't recognize it. "Tell him I slipped out on my own, that I called you from the airport and said I had to go, that I couldn't do this anymore. Don't let him know you were part of this."

Abby nods again, eyes suspiciously bright, and then pulls Liv into a tight hug.

"Call me," she orders. "Tell me what colour onesies I should buy."

Liv swallows hard around the lump in her throat and whispers, "Okay."

And then it's time, time to step onto the plane that will take her into the unknown, all the baggage loaded, and Huck leads and Quinn follows and she is not alone. Thank God, she is not alone.

As they're taking off, she keeps looking at her phone. He hasn't called.


	2. Haven

The first call comes ten minutes after they touch down in Seattle. She holds the phone in her hand, lets it ring and ring on silent, and then watches as the voicemail comes through. She doesn't listen to it. She can't.

She's exhausted, head to toe, but they aren't finished yet. Huck gets them a hotel suite for the night, pays under a false name, and she's distantly glad that someone else is handling all the details for once. _Consider it handled_ plays in her head like a half-forgotten tune, and she almost laughs out loud. She can't handle a damn thing right now.

That night, she curls into the queen-sized bed alone, and she's cold, so cold that she can't stop shivering, wraps her arms around herself and tries her best not to think of his bulk at her back, the warmth that constantly emanates off of him. No matter how frigid the weather, she can always rely on that warmth, the steadiness of his arms around her, the blunt strength of those big hands. The metaphor is so obvious she rolls her eyes at her own sentimentality, but it doesn't stop the shivering. Nothing does.

She's still awake at 3:30 in the morning when she hears the door open, scratching across the carpeting, and she feels the bed depress next to her. He lays there, over the duvet, stares up at the ceiling in the darkness. He doesn't say a word.

After a long beat, she rolls over and lays a hand on his chest, feels the steady breaths he draws in and out. The shivering eases, just a little.

"Thank you, Huck," she whispers, and it frightens her how small she sounds, how diminished.

"Whatever you need," he whispers back, and she clutches his shirt in her hand, buries her head in the pillow and finally sleeps, freefalling into unconsciousness.

When she wakes, there's sunlight in bright bars across the foot of the bed and he's gone. There's an imprint of his shirt button on the palm of her hand.

She checks her phone, compulsively. Twenty-seven missed calls. Eleven voicemails.

She turns it off and shoves it to the bottom of her bag.

* * *

The house is perfect, she thinks, staring at it from the curb as the taxi driver helps Huck unload her bags. It's small, painted a weathered blue, and there are pansies growing in twin pots on the steps to the front door, bright splashes of red and purple against the grey mist. She lets Quinn open the door and go in ahead of her.

Inside, it's simple, cozy-cream walls and slightly worn furniture, nothing like the stark elegance of her apartment. The walls are bare, she notes, and as she stands in the middle of the living room, taking stock, she wonders why there's furniture but nothing hanging on the walls, no paintings, not a solitary thing. Huck walks up behind her, follows her gaze.

"I thought you'd like to hang things. Yourself," he offers, and she turns to give him a grateful smile.

"I would," she says, softer than usual, and she closes her eyes tightly, breathes in the scent of sea air and old wood. This is home, at least for now. She'd better get used to it.

"Show me the rest of it," she says, and her hand flutters over her stomach for just a moment before she forces it back to her side.

Huck leads the way into the narrow hallway, and she swallows hard and follows. One foot after the other.


	3. Inked

A/N: First of all, thank you so much for the lovely reviews! I'm glad you're enjoying this so far.

If you're interested, the story about Juan de Fuca and the information about Port Townsend is factually correct (at least as much as I could verify via the Internet). From my research, it seems like a perfectly lovely place to live. There is a state park, it does have a lighthouse, and it does overlook the Strait of Juan de Fuca. It also seems like a good place to hide if you're having a president's baby in secret, so...y'know, perfect for my purposes!

Finally, if you're here for the Olitz action, fear not...it's coming. Be patient!

* * *

It's a quiet place, Port Townsend, nine thousand souls overlooking the choppy waters of the bay. The old Victorian buildings are beautiful, the downtown bustles with art galleries and indie restaurants, but she doesn't venture out much. It's been three months, and she still doesn't know most of the street names or where the closest grocery store is. She doesn't want to know.

Most days, she drives to the state park, through the trees dripping with moisture, sometimes with tendrils of fog still clinging to the ground, and goes up along the coastline to the lighthouse. Some days, she parks and walks along the beach, miles of empty sand and sea around her, variations of grey blending into each other. Some days she climbs up to the lookout point of the lighthouse, stands there on the deck staring out across the strait.

The first time she came, the lighthouse guard told her it was named for Juan de Fuca, a Greek explorer who was in the service of the king of Portugal. She looked him up at the local library (she hasn't touched her laptop in months) and discovered that he sailed to the Far East, explored up the Pacific coastline, claimed to find great riches. He never received full payment for his services, she read, and returned home to die in obscurity, embittered and alone. She feels a certain kinship to him. After all, she isn't the first one to change her name, set adrift on uncharted seas. Not the only one to fear dying without leaving her mark on something. She wonders if he would have appreciated finally being known, his name inked indelibly onto the map.

She's a little envious, truth be told.

When she comes home in the haze of evening, Quinn is always waiting for her, with an exasperated furrow between her eyebrows. There's supper, sometimes takeout from the Italian place a few blocks away, sometimes homemade. Quinn's a better cook than Olivia gave her credit for. Some nights Liv cooks, simple things, scrambled eggs and biscuits from a can. She tells Quinn that she never bothered to learn to cook, not when D.C. had every form of restaurant anyone could want. She supposes she'll learn a little, now.

It's been three months, and he's called every day, like clockwork. She lets the voicemails pile up on her phone, doesn't delete them.

It's quiet here.

~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f

Abby calls her once a week to check in, asks how she feels and if there's any morning sickness, clucks at her like a mother hen for walking the beach for hours by herself. At Liv's request, she relays the juiciest news from the Hill, all the backroom political machinations that she used to live for. Abby never mentions him.

It's four months before she asks, tentatively, "How is he?"

There's a long silence on the other end, and she can hear Abby shifting at her desk.

"Not good," she says finally, because Liv knows her too well for her to be able to lie and get away with it.

Olivia sinks down on the floor, her back against the couch, and leans her head back against the seat cushions.

"What's he doing?" she asks, because she doesn't want to know the answer but she can't stop herself. The dull ache that's been lodged just under her breastbone for four months now has started to throb, pulsing like an open wound. She makes a fist and holds it against her chest.

Abby sighs. "Drinking. A lot. Not eating. I don't think he's sleeping, either. Liv, he-"

She breaks off abruptly, and Olivia presses a little harder, shoves against the pain blooming through her lungs, her ribcage, her stomach.

"What?" she whispers.

Abby doesn't say anything for five beats, six, seven.

"I think he's just-given up. On living. On everything," she says finally, and there's a flatness to her voice that tells Liv how tired she really is. "He gave up the night he came back and saw...when he found out you were gone."

Liv curls into herself, knees drawn up to her slightly rounded stomach, cradles the phone on her shoulder.

"Are you okay?" she asks. Abby huffs through her nose, a little exasperated noise.

"I'm okay," she says, begrudgingly, and then, "Liv, you need to take care of yourself. One of you has to. Promise me."

"I promise," she says, and there's silence on the other end of the line. She can hear a door slam, a conversation in the background.

"I have to go," Abby murmurs. "Talk to you later?"

"Bye," she murmurs back, and then there's nothing but the dial tone in her ear and she lets herself fall over slowly, cheek rubbing against the roughness of the wool throw rug, and she just lies there, stares at nothing, still clutching the phone in one hand, until Quinn comes in three hours later and makes her get up, go get in bed.

She doesn't go to the coast for a while after that.


	4. Fissure

A/N: Thanks for the reviews! I love getting your feedback-please keep them coming!

So...in answer to Clio1792's question, Liv does have a gynecologist, which just so happens to be important for this chapter. Huck and Quinn are very good at a lot of things, but I'm not sure delivering babies is one of them. Very little call for drills and scalpels and other methods of causing intense amounts of pain.

Also, Fitz does show up in this chapter (sort of). Naturally, this does not go well. So, please read, enjoy, and if you are so minded, tell me what you think!

* * *

For five months, she hasn't seen his face. No television, no newspapers, no Internet, no possible way for her resolve to break. Quinn keeps a TV in her bedroom, and sometimes late at night Liv can hear it, the sound garbled through the walls. It doesn't matter-she has walled herself off from the world, water all around her, the silence impenetrable. She can endure here, tucked away in this near-forgotten pocket of the world, pretend that she is a simple person, not quite normal (she does not do normal), but simple seems easy enough.

She stops thinking so the day she's sitting in the doctor's office for her monthly checkup (Huck has threatened to fly out and drag her there bodily if she misses, so she makes it to every appointment like clockwork). She avoids the glossy magazines, brings a book, something she picked up at the used bookstore during one of her rare trips downtown. She's engrossed in a description of Puget Sound when she hears his voice, and it's all she can do to not leap out of her seat with the shock of it.

"My fellow Americans," is all she hears before the buzzing in hers ears begins, and she turns blindly towards the door, searching for him, before she realizes that it's the TV mounted in a corner of the waiting room. She stares up at it, greedy, the first time she's seen or heard him in almost half a year, and the sight almost makes her sick to her stomach then and there. He looks terrible, gaunt, his cheekbones rising sharply from the planes of his face. There are shadows carved deeply under his eyes, his eyes...God, there are not words for this, no words for the exhaustion in them, the pain. She wonders how everyone else doesn't see it, thinks maybe they do, maybe the American public has noticed that their president is wearing down to nothingness right before their eyes. How the hell would she know?

He's still talking, the banner underneath running something about the G8 summit, international heads of state, but she can't read it very well anymore. Her vision is blurring, and in the back of her mind she realizes her breath is coming fast, too fast, and when she stands her legs are like water beneath her. She stumbles out the door, almost bumps into someone coming in, and by the time she makes it to her car she's doubled over from the shooting pains through her abdomen. She never does know how she made it home.

Quinn finds her dry-heaving in the back yard, on her hands and knees, her fingers curled into the soft ground, nails broken, dirt streaking her fingers.

"Is it the baby?" Quinn gasps, kneeling, her arm coming up around Olivia's shoulders, and she shakes her head, slumps into Quinn's grasp. She's so tired, she thinks dimly. She should go to sleep, she's so tired…

Quinn pulls her into a half-sitting position, strokes her hair back from her face.

"Liv…" she whispers, half a question, and then she presses her lips together firmly and pulls her phone out of her pocket. "I'm calling Abby," she says, and Olivia doesn't bother to tell her no, just rests her forehead against Quinn's shoulder and breathes in fabric softener and the smell of damp earth.

She brings one hand up to her stomach and doesn't even notice when she leaves smudges of dirt across her blouse.

~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~

Abby walks through her door two days later, messenger bag dangling from her shoulder and fire in her eyes. She walks straight through the house, onto the back patio, her heels clacking against the wooden planks, and plants herself in front of Liv's deck chair.

"What is going on with you?" she asks, without preamble, and Olivia smiles for the first time in what feels like forever.

"Hello to you too," she says, and Abby sits down with a whoosh, lays a hand on the blanket covering her legs.

"What happened, Liv?" she asks, and Olivia turns her head, looks at the tangle of phlox and lupine spilling across the flowerbed just below the deck.

"I saw him," she says, blankly, and wonders how three words have made her an invalid. Abby sucks in her breath sharply, lets the bag drop with a thud.

"When? Where? God, Liv, he came here? How did he-"

She shakes her head, eyes still trained on the riot of lavender and blue.

"On the TV. At the doctor's office," she says, and thinks that the old Olivia would have been ashamed, that a figure on a screen could cause this. The new Olivia simply doesn't care. (Simple, yes, she is simple now.)

"Oh, Liv…" Abby whispers, and she feels her friend's fingers tangle around her own, feels them gently squeeze. She takes a breath in through her nose, closes her eyes against the watery sunshine threatening to break out from behind the clouds.

"I'm okay," she murmurs, and she feels Abby's hand tighten. She doesn't open her eyes.

"No, you're not," but Abby's voice is not unkind. "Neither of you is."

~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~

Abby stays as long as she can, three days, makes up a story about a dead brother and funeral arrangements to stave off the frantic calls that come in every five minutes or so on her cell. She stays long enough to make Olivia walk around the back garden twice every day, long enough to pull a few strings and grease a few palms so that for the remainder of her pregnancy, Olivia will have check-ups at home. When Abby tells her, the night before she flies out, Liv finds her lips twitching involuntarily.

"I didn't think doctors did house calls anymore," she observes drily, even though she knows the answer to this. Abby nudges her ankle; they are curled on the couch, Liv's feet under the blanket, brushing Abby's knees, and for a few moments she feels almost warm again.

"For five thousand dollars, it turns out your gynecologist is willing to meet with you anywhere you please," she responds, rests her palm on the arch of Liv's foot. "Honestly, you could have this kid on a dinghy in the middle of the bay and I don't think she'd bat an eye."

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that," Olivia says, tongue-in-cheek, and feels a sudden flare of panic at the thought of labour, the pain, not knowing what comes next. "Will you-" she starts, and can't make herself finish.

"Of course I'll come," Abby says, softly, takes Liv's hands in hers. "We all will."

Quinn pokes her head in from the kitchen where she's washing up.

"The plane tickets are already booked," she says, and Olivia turns to look at her, the woman who has saved her right back.

"She better not come early, then," she says, and doesn't even realize that she called the baby "she."


	5. Rubicon

A/N: Let me start this off by saying again that your reviews, favs, and follows are so very encouraging! Thank you.

I've had several people concerned that Fitz is taking his sweet time showing up, which is no doubt somewhat frustrating. I promise that he will, in fact, be in this story, and that Olitz is going to be endgame! However, I really wanted to explore how Olivia and her team pull together in this crisis because, for me, _Scandal_ is so much about who Liv is with her team, her people-her family. And I honestly think that she and Fitz are never going to work long-term until she knows that her family is going to be okay. Her biological family has failed her spectacularly on so many levels, and so her surrogate family is all she has left. Figuring out how to _finally_ allow Fitz to become an integral part of that mix is where I'm headed with this. I'm also trying to explore how much Olivia misses him, how much she _aches_ with missing him, so that when this finally happens, we have a good idea of where her headspace has been during the pregnancy.

So...please read, review, and enjoy!

* * *

After six months, a message pops up on her that announces that she's reached her storage limit for voice messages and her missed call log. She doesn't tell anyone, doesn't open any of the voicemails, keeps her phone locked in her desk drawer, hides the key on a shelf that's hard to reach. She makes herself check it at least every fortnight. She thinks she owes him that, to at least know that he tried.

Her stomach is rounded now, showing clearly, and one afternoon, sitting in the deck chair with a book lying idly in her lap, she feels the first movement, a shift within her that shocks her to her core. Her hands fly to her stomach, searching for the source, pressing gently, and then it happens again-a faint flutter, then a little jab, a tiny elbow, a foot, shifting in place.

She sits there waiting for it to happen again for nearly two hours, and finally gives up and goes in to fix dinner; it's her turn tonight, and she isn't in the mood for anything complicated. Quinn brought back some leeks from the farmer's market yesterday, and so she decides to try her hand at potato-leek soup. It's chilly in the evenings here, even in the summer, and no matter what the temperature is she's still cold, always. Sometimes she thinks she will never get warm again.

She's slicing potatoes when it happens again, a tiny one-two kick that nearly makes her slice her thumb open with the paring knife. She drops the knife, the potato half still in her hand, and lays her hand on the swell of her stomach, heart in her throat.

The flutter stops, perversely, and she finds herself almost grinning. Of course her baby (their baby, something treacherous whispers) would be stubborn. Naturally.

She doesn't let herself think of his hands over hers, the breathless joy on his face to feel that first kick, the first proof that the life they made together is healthy and active, already trying to find its place in the world. She doesn't let herself think of him at all.

That night, she throws away the key to her desk drawer.

~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~

Seven months, eight months, they are in the dead of summer and she is still shivering, even in the middle of the day when the temperatures are in the high seventies and the breeze off the bay is mild and caressing. Her ankles are swollen and her back is killing her and she is unreasonably irritated with everything and everyone, snaps at Quinn until they're both yelling at each other across the living room, the sound carrying through the open windows. They don't apologize the next day-neither of them does apologies-but she brings Quinn her favourite Thai takeout home for dinner, and they do the dishes in a companionable silence.

"I miss wine," she confesses one night, as Quinn types something on her laptop and she fiddles with the frayed corner of her book. Quinn looks up and smiles, swirls her chardonnay and takes a sip slowly, gives Olivia a rueful look.

"We'll buy you a whole case after the baby's born," she says, and Liv smiles, stretches out her sore feet and flexes her toes.

"Deal," she agrees.

She sees a bottle of Du Bellay sitting on the top shelf of the pantry the next week, and smiles to herself.

They will be ready.

~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~

The baby comes a week early, and, in retrospect, that is the catalyst for everything else that happens, spun out over days, weeks, months, a span that leaves her reeling. She feels roughly the size of a beached whale now, although Abby assures her over FaceTime that she's still as tiny as ever, except for the fact that she's apparently swallowed a basketball. She's steadfastly refused to do anything with the little corner office they have made into a nursery, won't pick a color for the walls or look at furniture until she's 37 weeks in, and suddenly she turns into a crackling ball of determined energy, paints the walls until well past midnight, borrows Quinn's laptop to order nursery furniture online. She keeps it simple, light grey on three of the walls and a pop of sunny yellow on the fourth.

(She overhears Quinn talking to Abby, low and exasperated, and she almost chuckles when Quinn snaps, "Of course she couldn't do this like a normal person, what did you expect?")

The furniture arrives over the next week or so, and she's hanging a print, a lion with a mane as variegated as the rainbow, when the dull ache that's been plaguing her all morning sharpens and rolls forward, makes her gasp with the pain. She pushes it aside, straightens the frame, and picks up the next picture, the tiger. Stevie Wonder is blasting through the speakers at her feet (she does not believe in this Baby Mozart nonsense), and she sways a little to the music, goes back to measuring and marking so that the nail will go in just the right place, straight into the stud. It takes a while, but she has all three of them up when the next contraction hits. She grits her teeth in irritation. She does not have _time_ for this.


	6. Knock Me Out

A/N: Two chapters in one evening is a bit unprecedented for me, but that last one was short, and a cliffhanger, and I already have the next bit written, so...here goes.

From this point forward in the story, the point of view is going to shift back and forth between Quinn and Olivia. I wish I had some sort of grand meta explanation for this, but the best I can come up with is that I suddenly started writing from Quinn's perspective and couldn't make myself stop for a while. I'm going to retcon that decision by saying that, in retrospect, I think I wanted this incredibly difficult yet lovely moment to be from outside, from the person who's been carrying the responsibility and the burden of this secret right alongside Olivia. Because I've never forgotten that moment in Season 4 when Olivia gets back from the island and the world is crumbling around her, and Quinn's the one who kept OPA from completely falling apart. It makes sense to me that she's doing the same thing here.

Again - please read, enjoy, and let me know what you think!

(And yes, I borrowed the chapter title from "Dear Theodosia." Lin-Manuel, please don't sue me. Thanks.)

* * *

Quinn doesn't get home for another four hours; she's running errands, picking up groceries, stopping in at the local fish stand for fresh salmon because Olivia craves it all the time now. (Quinn complains loudly that only Olivia Pope would crave fresh-caught Chinook salmon instead of something ordinary like mac and cheese, but she brings it home three nights a week anyway.) When she gets back, she finds soaked towels in the bathtub, Liv's overnight bag standing by the doorway, and a rattling noise coming from the bedroom.

She comes in to find Olivia frantically trying to jimmy the lock on her top desk drawer with a screwdriver, her eyes wild, shirt half-buttoned and hands shaking.

"I have to open it, I have to get it out, he needs to know-" she babbles desperately, and Quinn pries the screwdriver away from her with a knot in her gut.

"Liv," she says, as calmly as she can under the circumstances, "are you in labour?"

Olivia grabs the drawer with both hands and shakes, hard, pencils and paperweights crashing to the floor at her feet.

"I have to get it out," she repeats, and there's a note of hysteria in her voice that Quinn's never heard before. She acts on instinct, grabs Liv's shoulders and gives her a firm shake, takes her arms in a grip that can't be fought off.

"Are. You. In. Labour?" she asks through her teeth, and she doesn't need an answer when Liv arches backward under her hands and groans deep in her throat.

"All right, we're going to the hospital," she says firmly, and ends up practically frog-marching Olivia to the car, then threatens her with dismemberment if she moves out of the passenger seat while Quinn grabs the overnight bag and locks up the house. All the way to the hospital, the whole fifteen-minute drive, Liv alternates between those muffled groans and telling Quinn over and over that he has to know, they have to tell him, she never called him back. Quinn clenches her jaw and drives and tries very hard to not let the wetness in her eyes spill over. She had not been expecting...this.

She gets Liv to the hospital, gets her checked in, and the second she's resting (a small room, private, with a window that overlooks the bay, because they _can_ and five thousand dollars will get you a lot in this world), Quinn calls Huck and then Abby. _Get here. Now. It's time._

She doesn't really take a deep breath, all the way in and out, until six hours later when they walk into Liv's room and Huck takes her hand, squeezes hard. They are here, thank God, and she can do this now.

~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~

It's a long labour, twenty-seven hours, but the nurses keep saying that it's not uncommon, especially for a first child. Liv keeps quiet for most of it, growls low in her throat when the contractions get too bad, but she refuses the epidural. Abby shakes her head in disbelief, but Quinn thinks she gets it. Liv has never been one to bypass the pain.

On August 2nd at 2:07 PM, Liv finally screams, one long despairing cry that shakes Quinn's bones in her body and makes the hair stand up on Huck's arms, and she goes limp just as the baby slides into the doctor's waiting hands. Abby brushes the sweat-soaked hair from her cheeks, Huck slips her an ice cube, but Quinn is the one who steps in to cut the cord, who takes the baby after it's been weighed and examined and cleaned off, and who presents the little blanket-wrapped bundle to Olivia, her cheeks wet and mascara smeared.

"It's a girl," she whispers, and she doesn't think she's ever seen a look like that on Liv's face before, the sheer awe of it battling with the fear.

"What am I going to name her?" Liv murmurs, her voice hoarse and cracked from the hours of misery, and all three of them smile at her, reach out to touch the baby's dark head.

"Whatever you think is right," Huck says simply, and Quinn sees that they're all perilously close to tears.

"Amalia," Liv says. "Her name is Amalia."

Quinn doesn't get a chance to look it up until much, much later, but when she does she finds a variety of meanings. The one that stands out, though, is a transliteration from Arabic, the feminized form of Amal.

It means hope.

~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~

Day two, and Olivia is pushing to get out, _out_ , wants to go home to her blue house with the pansies out front, wants to take her daughter to the refuge that's kept them both safe for the past eight and a half months, and the team is tired of fighting her on it. Which is why she signs herself out of the hospital a day early, birth certificate with no father's name tucked neatly into Abby's briefcase, and Huck drives them back along the coastline. Olivia holds the baby up, lets the sea air blow on her skin, and Mali looks at her mother solemnly with infinite blue eyes and doesn't make a sound.

They nestle into the little blue house, make it work somehow. Abby fields calls constantly, has to walk outside half a dozen times an hour, but she manages anyway. Quinn knows some of the calls have to be from the president, because there's a particular _look_ Abby gets, face pinched, a white dent pressing in on either side of her nose, but she doesn't say a word. Huck sleeps on an air mattress-he said he was happy with the floor, but Quinn had to draw the line somewhere-and Abby bunks on the couch, and they all take turns with the baby so Liv can get a little sleep. The baby nurses constantly, it seems, but they've gotten good at storing milk and bottle-feeding, so good that Quinn almost laughs at them, two trained killers and the White House Chief of Staff, bottle-feeding a newborn like pros.

Some days she wishes Harrison had been here to see this. She likes to think he'd have been good with babies.

By day three, they have all settled into a routine of sorts, rocking and feeding and changing (Abby makes faces like she's unearthed the dead, but Huck and Quinn aren't fazed), and Liv is smiling and sitting up in bed, and by day four they all pile into her room for brunch, sit on the bed and drink mimosas and toast Mali, who gurgles to herself in her hand-made bassinet. The sun is bright and warm, striped across the blankets, and the four of them laugh more than Quinn can remember in the past two years combined. It's heady, stronger than the champagne in their glasses, and suddenly she remembers the bottle in the pantry. She hops up, ignoring the protests behind her, and when she comes back in with the Du Bellay and a corkscrew Liv's eyes light up like a Christmas tree.

"I'm nursing…" she says, but it's reluctant, and Abby nudges her with an elbow.

"One glass, and you only have a wait a couple of hours," she says, knowledgeably, and Liv cocks an eyebrow at her. "What? I read," she retorts, and Liv chuckles and reaches for her glass.

"Hit me," she says, and they raise their glasses again, the clink resounding in the little room, and Quinn's read all the baby books, she knows it's far too early, but she swears she hears the kid coo.

She remembers that moment for the rest of her life.


	7. Zero Hour

A/N: All right, Olitz shippers! I promised that Fitz would show up eventually, and lo and behold, here he is. A little patriotic present for you in honour of the Fourth of July.

This one's short, but the POV is about to switch, so I figured a chapter break would make things less confusing. Thanks again for all the lovely reviews-especially for those of you who have said something about the OPA relationships in this fic. I ship Olitz like none other. This is one of my favourite OTPs. Ever. But for me the team is kind of an OTP too, in a weird way. So figuring out how to make _both_ OTPs work has been...shall we say, a challenge!

(Also, thanks to those of you who said you liked Mali! I've kind of gotten attached to her, even if she is completely and utterly a figment of my imagination.)

* * *

It's three months later, three quiet, lovely months, watching Amalia grow. She thrives on the salt sea air, gets delightfully chubby, fat thighs and rounded cheeks. Quinn is fascinated by her, how eerily beautiful she is - skin like silk and honey, and blue eyes that have not changed since the day they brought her home from the hospital. If there was ever any doubt about her parentage, those eyes have laid it firmly to rest. Sometimes Quinn wonders what Liv sees when she looks in those blue depths, and decides that she's better off not knowing.

As far as she knows, the drawer in Liv's desk has remained locked.

Three months in, and they're all back together for a weekend reunion, touching base, starting to make plans for the future. Huck has an apartment in Seattle now, bounces back and forth between the coasts, doing...she doesn't want to know what he's doing, really. He's there two or three times a month to check in on them, and that's enough. Abby has flown in from D.C., despite the fact that three absences in less than a year is stretching it. Quinn points out that if she has to come up with any more dead relatives, she'll be robbing graveyards, and manages to earn a slight snicker from Liv.

It heartens them all that Liv seems to have some of her old fire back, galvanized by the need to lay the groundwork for her daughter's start in life. In the evenings, they pass the baby around the little living room, warmed by the crackle of a driftwood fire, and talk seriously of what to do next, whether to revive OPA, where to go, how to start. There's only one topic that's a nonstarter with Liv, and that's moving back to D.C.

"That's where our base is," Abby argues, fingers hovering over her phone lest it go off again. "That's where we built our clientele, Liv, it makes _sense_ to go back there if we want to hit restart."

Liv shakes her head, adamant, and they tacitly agree to move on to other suggestions. Late that night, though, Quinn gets up to grab a glass of water and stops at the doorway to the living room. Liv and Abby are curled on the couch, just like before, talking in low voices. She knows it's not fair to eavesdrop, not when they've all been through so much together, but she hears the words "D.C." and can't stop herself.

"I can't - Abby, you know I can't," Liv is saying, almost pleading, and Abby lays a hand on her shoulder in silent support. "You know why I can't."

Abby sighs, rubs her shoulder up and down. "Do you really think it'll matter, Liv? Honestly? Do you really think he won't come find you the second he figures out where you are?"

Quinn can hear the hard swallow, sees Liv's hands twisting in her lap.

"He still doesn't know?"

Abby huffs out an impatient breath.

"What do you think?"

"I almost - " She bites back the words, but Quinn knows exactly what she was about to say, remembers all too well the frantic drive to the hospital, over and over again _I didn't call him back, I didn't listen to them, I didn't answer the phone. I never answered. Not once._ So this still isn't over.

"You aren't going to be able to stop this, Liv," Abby warns, and her hands drop to cover Liv's, holding them steady. "You might be able to pick your turf and your timing, but that's about it. You need to be prepared for him. _We_ need to be prepared."

Liv nods, lips pursed, and Quinn sneaks back to bed thirsty, wondering exactly how they're going to manage this, how even a team of fixers can fix something this huge. At least they have time, she thinks, relieved as she drifts off to sleep. Time to think, to prepare.

Famous last words, she thinks, looking back.

~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~

They are out in the garden, the last afternoon they have with everyone together, playing with the baby and drawing in the cool dampness of the autumn air. Abby is in the kitchen, phone cocked on her shoulder, promising some official someone she'll be back in D.C. in a few hours while she puts the final touches on the best damn cinnamon rolls Quinn's ever seen. Huck is sitting on the steps of the deck, watching everything the way he always does. She and Liv are walking with the baby, Liv bouncing her and Quinn behind her making faces, trying to get Mali to smile. (It's her latest accomplishment, and they're all enamoured with it.)

It's all normal, nothing out of the ordinary, everything just fine, until they turn a corner and suddenly everything is not at all fine. Abby is running towards them, hair flying, and she's so out of breath that Quinn can barely make out the words.

"Secret...Service," she pants, clutches at Liv's forearm with hands that are trembling uncontrollably. "At... at the front door."

Quinn thinks Liv's knees are going to buckle, almost makes a grab for the baby, but Liv just stands there, rooted to the ground.

"Are you sure?" she whispers, and her face is blank, an unreadable mask. Abby just nods, eyes terrified and filled with pity all at the same time.

"Is it…" and Liv can't finish the sentence, but they all know what she's saying anyway. Out of the corner of her eye, Quinn notices Huck has disappeared, and she hopes to God that he's not out there trying to take down the President of the United States. They're in enough trouble as it is.

"I don't know," Abby says, her breath coming back but her voice still shaking. "But why else…?"

Liv presses her lips together tightly, nods. "Take the baby," she says to Quinn, tightly, and pulls her long sweater closer around her. (It's pink, the colour of carnations and peonies, and Quinn can't think why at this particular moment this is important, but somehow it is.)

She lifts her chin, looking brittle but utterly regal all at once, and orders with all of of her former authority, "Don't bring her in the house."

Quinn reaches over with her free hand, touches the arm of the woman who saved her, who has been her boss and her mentor and her friend, whose hand she held during labour and for whom she would give her own life, and says, "Over a cliff."


	8. Kairos

A/N: I couldn't leave y'all hanging with the end of that last chapter, and I'm a little ahead, so...here's the good stuff! It may have taken me eight blessed chapters to get here, but I hope it was worth it.

I was looking for the perfect title for this chapter, because I am of the firm opinion that titles matter. So I started looking up synonyms for "crisis," because that's pretty much what this is, and found the Greek term "kairos." It has a variety of meanings, but the important thing about it is that the ancient Greeks had two words for time - chronos and kairos. Chronos is sequential time, time on a clock, everyday, mundane counting of hours and minutes. Kairos, on the other hand, is a term for those moments when you have to make a decision that changes everything, that shapes the course of the rest of your life. It's a word for the right time, the consequential time - something permanent, something immutable. Which I thought was perfect for the choice Olivia has to make in this chapter.

This is a long note, but I wanted to make something clear: up to this point in this fic, Olivia has been running, hiding, avoiding for all she is worth. And now, she is being forced to stand in her truth, to either accept the path before her or keep trying to escape. And, just once, I wanted her to make the right choice.

* * *

They tell her later that it's like watching lightning strike - that moment when you see the bolt coming, reaching for the ground, you're expecting it but you still can't believe that it's happening, and then it hits and everything goes white. That's what it's like when she opens the door and Fitz is on the other side.

They just stand there for what seems like forever, the silence deafening, like thunder. She can hear his breathing, harsh and ragged, can't tell if she's breathing or not. She doesn't think she's been breathing, not really, not for a year.

It's not true to form, but she's the one who makes the first move, reaches out with trembling fingers and then drops her arm back to her side, because she's not entirely sure he's real. Perhaps this entire thing is a hallucination, a very good one, very believable, right down to the valleys etched under his eyes and the lines in his forehead, new ones, deep.

He sees the movement, and it's like something unlocks inside him. He makes a sound in his throat, something she can't describe, and steps across the threshold, into her refuge, and suddenly she's terrified beyond measure.

"How did you know?" she says, strangled; he stares down at her like she's a stranger.

"I tracked her phone," he says, and tilts his head towards Abby. At the sound of his voice, her hands fly to her mouth involuntarily, press hard. She hasn't heard his voice since that terrible day in the doctor's office, distorted through the TV speakers, and it's too much, it's all too much, she can't do this.

Abby draws in a sharp breath behind her, but no one speaks. His face works, twists, and then he forces himself back to composure.

"I didn't know where you were," he says - so lost, and it breaks her heart, clean, right down the middle. It breaks her heart, but her baby girl is in the back garden and he's standing here in front of her and she can't say a word, not a single solitary word.

She thinks of the phone, locked in her desk drawer, the 324 voicemails that have never been heard, and she does the only thing she can do. She reaches out again and brushes her fingers across his sleeve, right above the wrist.

They tell her later that he breaks then, that you could see a man, the most powerful man on the planet, shatter to pieces right there on the throw rug that Quinn bought when they moved in. Before she knows what's happening, he hauls her against him, holding her so tightly she can't take a breath, and she can feel his cheek against her hair, the shudders that are rocking him from head to toe.

"Livvie," he mutters. " _Livvie_ ," and she loses it, loses every ounce of strength she's conjured up for as long as she can remember, and buries her face in his shirtfront and just _cries_. It's quiet at first, her tears muffled in the expensive fabric, and then she feels his lips at her hairline, against her ear, and it just makes it worse, every gasping sob a little harder, a little faster.

They tell her later that it was a terrible confluence of events, that it wasn't meant to happen like it did. She believes them, because it could not been worse if they'd all deliberately tried.

They tell her that the Secret Service agents found Quinn in the garden when they were doing their sweep, were trying to get her to the house so they could figure out who she was and why she was there, that she was doing her best to get away without hurting the baby. They tell her that Mali began to scream at the top of her lungs, frightened and furious, just as one of the agents flung open the back door and ran straight into Huck. They tell her that it seemed like the loudest cry they'd ever heard in their lives.

All she knows is that there is a moment, a moment when she's back in his arms and he's muttering endearments into her hair, and she's letting herself go for the first time since she saw the two little lines on a plastic strip held between her hands. There is a moment, and then the back door slams open and she can hear the sound of her daughter crying, and Fitz-Fitz goes utterly still.

She tilts her head up to look at him, her face a mess, and the look in his eyes sends a chill down her spine.

"Liv…?" he breathes, and she is wordless again, can only shake her head mutely as her hands come up to hold him in place. He can't, _he can't_ , but he ignores her, pushes past her and moves towards the hallway like a man in a dream.

She tears after him with everything she has, but she's too late. By the time she reaches him, he's standing on the patio, face to face with Quinn, fixated on the child in her arms. Mali is whimpering, still flushed and tear-stained, and she takes absolutely no notice when he raises a finger and brushes it gently, oh so gently, against her cheek.

" _Liv_." She hears it, ground out between his teeth, and in that moment the whole world she's built for herself, the little blue house with pansies out front and the sea breeze blowing in across the bay, comes crashing down around her feet. She must make a noise, she doesn't know what it is, but he reaches for her, his eyes never leaving the baby.

"Tell me - " he manages, and then his voice fails him. She stands there, helpless, his hand on her arm, and when he finally looks back at her he sees the truth in her face, immediately.

 _324 voice messages_. _1,012 missed calls._

She gathers every ounce of courage she has, and nods.


	9. At One

A/N: First, thanks so much for the lovely reviews! Y'all are the best people ever. On that note, I have been having some fascinating conversations with fellow fans about Olivia, her portrayal in this fic, and her portrayal in the show. I will fully and freely admit that the Olivia we have seen thus far in this story is not making the greatest of all the decisions. That was a deliberate choice on my part - mostly because I very much wanted her to be in character, and I think we see her doing this sort of thing on the show all the time. She absolutely does love Fitz. I have no doubt whatsoever about that. But she is also desperately afraid - and I think we see her fears get the better of her love for him time and again. Add the desire to protect her child to that mix, and things get a little nuclear. I wanted that explosive conflict to happen in this fic because a) it's definitely in character for her, and b) because I wanted to show the ugly depths of her fear so that when she finally makes the choice that she needs to, the choice we're wanting her to make, it really _means_ something.

Obviously, Fitz is going to be less than pleased with her decisions up to this point. Therefore, there's a good bit of catharsis here, as Liv has to face up to the fact that having a child generally involves _both_ parents, and Fitz makes it perfectly plain that he has no intention of going anywhere...Liv's opinions on the matter be damned.

So, for those of you who have stuck around despite the fact that you wanted to strangle Olivia - thank you! Shonda has created an incredibly complex and difficult character, and I am just lucky to get to play with her ideas in the world of fanfic. I hope that the end of this chapter will provide some much-needed balm in the form of a classic Olitz reunion - lots of screaming followed by an unsurpassable need to be in each other's arms. :)

P.S. The title is a play on words with the word "atone." Take it as you will.

* * *

Quinn honestly does not remember what exactly happens between the moment the back door bursts open and the moment that Mali leaves her arms. She thinks later that she must have gone into mild shock.

What she does remember is the utterly wrecked look on the president's face as he takes his daughter for the first time, holds her to his chest with hands that are unspeakably gentle. She remembers Liv finally moving to him, one hand on his shoulder, the other covering his on the baby's back, the way they lean into each other, long shuddering breath after breath. It's like a spell has dropped over the little garden, because they're all frozen in place - Abby, Huck, the agents, herself, unable to move or make a sound.

And then the spell breaks abruptly. Liv turns and looks at them, her gladiators, and Huck is the first one to step forward.

"What do you need?" he asks, simply, and she smiles at him, slow and a little shaky.

"I've got this," she says softly. He lifts his head, a silent command, and they obediently troop inside. The president must have given some sort of silent order, because the agents troop in too, and the door closes behind all of them.

Abby turns, throws her hands up in the air, and lets them fall heavily to her sides.

"Well, since I don't have a job anymore," she says, and looks at the two agents with an exasperated grimace. "Want a cinnamon roll?"

Quinn thinks that if she weren't so worried, she might laugh.

~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~

They sit next to each other on the deck chair; Olivia finds it funny that she spent so much of her pregnancy there, hiding from him, and yet here they are. He hasn't let go of Mali since the second he laid eyes on her.

"What's her name?" he asks, the words gravelly, and she smiles a little, adjusts the baby's sock.

"Amalia," she says quietly. "Amalia Caroline."

She waits a beat, then relents. "We've been calling her Mali. For short."

He breathes out, presses his lips to the dark curls that cover their daughter's head. "Mali," he murmurs into her crown, and she feels the tears springing to her eyes, blinks them fiercely back.

She knows the next question, dreads it, but she thinks that she can at least give him this: to not have to ask.

"Three months," she offers, and she sees his eyes slam shut, sees the twist of pain across his face.

"Three months," he echoes distantly, and he rocks the baby, carefully, sways with her. Olivia looks away, because no matter how bad the past year has been, this is worse.

"Yes," she says, flat, because there is nothing else to say. She ran, she left him, and she was not going to tell him that they'd had a child together. It's simple, really. (She's simple now. She has to keep remembering that.)

Mali makes a sleepy, snuffly sound and without hesitation digs her head into Fitz's shoulder, wraps a chubby arm around his throat, and snuggles in to go to sleep. He makes an inarticulate noise, like he's been sucker-punched in the gut.

"You weren't going to tell me," he whispers, smoothes a hand over his daughter's back. Olivia stares at it, the bone-deep sweetness in the way he holds her, and bites the inside of her cheek, hard.

"I couldn't," she whispers back. "Not after…"

"Not after you left me," he fills in. "Not after you ran."

She grimaces, trying not to cry again. "I didn't…" But she trails off, not sure what to say. She knows all the reasons she ran, all the very good reasons that staying would have been a terrible idea, but she can't put any of them into words.

"You've left me so many times over the years that I've almost come to expect it by now," he says, conversationally, and her spine stiffens because calm and pleasant Fitz is never a good thing during an argument. "And when I thought you'd left because you couldn't take the pressure, or you just didn't want me anymore, I could make it. Not very well, but I could make it. But this? I can't - "

" _Make it?_ You weren't _making it!_ " she hisses, trying not to wake the baby. "Abby told me, about the drinking and the not eating and how you never slept. I saw you on the news, just once, and you looked like the living dead. Fitz, you can't - you shouldn't - "

"Shouldn't what?" he snaps. "And, by the way, I need to find a new Chief of Staff. Preferably one who doesn't lie to me every other breath she takes."

"Don't you dare fire Abby," she orders, eyes blazing. "She didn't want to be in this position. It's not her fault. And she has been there for me every step of the way, held my hand through every second in that delivery room. She didn't leave - "

She breaks off, because he's turned to face her, his breath coming hard.

"She didn't leave your side, is that it? She was there every second, held your hand through it all?" His lips curl back, show his teeth. "Do you think I wouldn't have given anything, anything at all, to have been there? With you? To be there when my daughter - _my daughter_ \- was born? You took that from me, Liv, you took it all from me. I would have _killed_ to have you back, to have you both with me."

He stops for a moment, eyes wild, and she wants to reach for him but can't.

"I didn't know where you were," he says, quietly. "I didn't know if you were alive or dead, I didn't know if you were safe, I didn't know anything at all. And now?" His voice cracks. "Did you think that I would be such a terrible father, Liv, so terrible that you had to hide her from me? That you were never going to tell me?"

She opens her mouth to protest and he stops her with a finger against her lips. "Don't you dare lie to me, Livvie, not now. You were going to make damn sure I never found out that we had a child together. You would have hidden it from me as long as you could, and don't you dare try to claim otherwise."

Her heart is thudding sickly in her throat, her pulse drumming too fast.

"I had to protect her!" she throws at him, pushing to her feet. "That is my _job_ , to protect her."

He stands up, careful even in his fury not to jostle the baby sleeping on his shoulder. "Protect her? From _me_? God, Liv, I - "

" _No!_ " she says, too loudly, and Mali whimpers in her sleep. "No," she repeats, quieter this time. "Not from you, Fitz. From everything else. But not from you."

He stares down at her, and she can see the defeat take all the starch out of him, sees him crumple into an older, tired version of himself.

"Everything else," he says dully, and she can feel the ache start to spread through her chest again.

"Yes," she murmurs, and she won't apologize for it. She hadn't counted on the fierceness of this love for her daughter, hadn't realized the lengths to which she would go to protect her, and it gives her fresh courage to face up to him. "Fitz, think about what would have happened if I'd stayed. If I'd stayed, and they'd found out. Think about what her life would be like, always, being the bastard child of the president's live-in whore."

He automatically lifts a hand to the baby's ears at the word, and she feels the irrational desire to laugh bubble up inside her.

"They wouldn't dare - " he spits through his teeth, and she knows it's the hormones, but that unthinking protectiveness makes something flare deep down.

"They would dare, and you know it," she says, striving for calm. "They would have been vicious, Fitz, and she's my daughter, _my daughter_. Maybe I should've told you - "

" _Maybe?_ " he interjects, eyebrows going up in outrage, and she raises her hands sharply.

"All right, I should've told you, tried to figure things out, but I had to protect her and I couldn't do it there, with everyone watching, always afraid that someone, anyone was going to find out. I had to go - "

"You had to run away, move to the other side of the damn _country_ , instead of telling me that you were pregnant with my child, instead of giving us a chance to be a family? You know what I would've done, Liv, you know I would've found a way to make this work. _We_ would've found a way. But instead, you did what you always do - you fixed it, you handled it, you decided and left me stranded in your wake. Do you know - "

But his voice chokes, and he can't go on; she knows the feeling, because her throat is aching, aching, and she can feel her lips tremble when she takes a breath.

"I'm sorry!" she says, flings it at him like a curse. "I'm sorry. I am sorry I didn't tell you. I'm sorry I ran. I did what I thought I had to do. But the question now, the question we both have to answer, is where does this go from here?"

She takes another long breath, asks the question that's terrified her since the second he walked through that door.

"Do you want to?" and God, her voice sounds so shaky. "Do you want to? Go from here?"

He turns, gives her an utterly blank look.

"Do I want - I'm sorry, did you just ask me if I want to be a part of my child's life? Part of yours? Did you seriously just ask me that?"

She fixes her eyes on the knot of his tie, because she can't meet that accusing stare, and clenches her jaw. Over her head, she hears him huff out a sharp breath through his nose.

"Liv," he says, and it's not the honeyed caressing tone that he uses when he's trying to sweet-talk her, but Christ, it goes down to her bones anyway. "Livvie. I am not walking away from here without you. Or our daughter. I am in this. We are in this. Do you understand me?"

She looks up at him, sees the welling in his eyes, and finally, finally something gives. Not far, not much, but something gives.

 _324 voice messages._

 _1,012 missed calls._

"All right," she whispers, strains to form the words. "All right. We're in."

He smiles for the first time since he arrived. "We're in."

She wasn't expecting it, but when he wraps his free arm around her, holds the three of them together, the dam she's built for a solid year cracks right across the center.

She has no idea where this is going, but she's here.

She's in.


	10. Home

A/N: So glad y'all are still enjoying this story-which, for the record, is a lot longer than I originally intended it to be.

As mentioned at the beginning of all this, I've been rewatching _Scandal_ on Netflix this summer, and it struck me today how different the world of this fic is from the world Shonda creates in Season 5, and yet how I unwittingly created some similarities, too. I love how brave Shonda is, to take Olivia to this incredibly dark place all throughout Season 5. Lord knows Liv is incredibly hard to like at times, but what guts, to make your character into a hard, angry shell of a woman and then challenge yourself to somehow bring her back.

I hope I've taken Liv to a slightly less dark place in this fic, but I still want to continue to play with her weaknesses, her insecurities, because those don't automatically melt away, even when her romantic dilemma is solved. However, weaknesses can go on the back burner for the moment - this chapter is all about the fluff and smut, because honestly those two deserve some of both at this point. (Also because even when they purport to not give a damn about each other, they are still so _stupidly_ in love. Even in Season 5. That's an OTP, people.)

So...enjoy the fluff and the sexytimes!

* * *

They all take turns peeking out the back window in the nursery, even the Secret Service agents, They occasionally go out front to where their colleagues are still stationed, talk into their receivers to whomever is covering the back perimeter, but they seem quite clear on the fact that they're not supposed to go on the patio. Quinn wonders what kind of signal the president uses to imply that death would be preferable to interrupting.

They wait at least an hour, tiptoeing around, trying to get a glimpse of the three of them without being too obvious that they're moving the blinds. After the first half-hour, Quinn starts losing it.

"Maybe we should go out there," she suggests, but it's half-hearted. "Make sure they're not killing each other or something."

Huck doesn't even bother to respond, just cuts her a sideways look and keeps peering through the window. Abby shakes her head, sharp and more than a little worried.

"No," she says, decisively. "They work best when there's no one between them, when it's just the two of them and they can pretend the world isn't there. Trust me, I've seen it before."

Quinn purses her lips and thinks about that for a while. Then, she beckons the other two to the corner of the room, out of the way of the agents; they huddle in a ludicrous powwow over Mali's crib.

"I have an idea for when they finally come back in here," she says, and they lean in, listening.

Time to have this settled, she decides.

~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~

When they finally come back in, Mali still peacefully asleep on Fitz's shoulder, they're greeted by her team, standing in a block in the living room, flanked by his agents.

"We've come to a decision," Quinn announces coolly, and it's all Liv can do to not blink. God, but she's come into her own these past few years. Gone are the days of the scared girl who jumped at shadows and apologized for getting the wrong kind of coffee.

"And what is that?" Fitz fires back, and she raises a hand to his shoulder, presses in to remind him to play nice. A turf war isn't going to help any of them.

"You two need some time to...talk," Abby chimes in, and her fair skin flushes just a bit. Liv remembers exactly the kind of _talking_ Abby is not-so-subtly alluding to, and she swallows convulsively. They are so not ready for this, not even a little bit -

"We'll take Mali, pick up some stuff for dinner," Huck says, very matter of fact, but it does not escape her notice that he's making direct eye contact with her, serious and determined. Her team, her _family_ , are all there, and even though they're standing opposite her they are so very much on her side. They want this to work if she wants it to work, and they will move heaven and earth (again) to make it happen. Suddenly she is swamped with such a wave of love for them that it hurts.

"You will not - " Fitz begins, outraged at the idea of _anyone_ taking away his daughter, but Liv pinches his shoulder through his suit (not gently), and nods.

"Thank you," she says quietly. They all share a look, decisive to a man, and Quinn's the one who steps forward, holds out her arms for Mali. She lifts her chin, looks at Fitz without challenge but without even a trace of fear, and Olivia remembers with a pang all the late-night dinners, the arguments through open windows, those strong hands on the steering wheel as the labour pains came and came. Quinn has been her partner through it all, and if anyone has a right to take her child for a few hours, it's she.

"Let her," she murmurs to Fitz, very gently. "It'll be all right."

He's struggling, she can see it in his face, but ultimately he trusts her, transfers their sleeping child to Quinn's waiting arms, and watches with such fear in his eyes that she aches for him.

"It's just for a little bit," she says, softly, pushes up on her toes out of habit to get closer to his ear. He turns, automatically slides his arm around her as he does.

"I know...I just..." and she nods, smoothes down his lapels with a practiced hand, gentling him.

"Just a little bit," she repeats, and motions silently with her other hand that they need to get going, _now_. She sees Abby's sheepish expression, the gravity in Huck's eyes, and then the door is closed and the house is quiet again. The agents have disappeared again to God knows where. They seem to be able to silently walk through walls on Fitz's command.

"So," he says, turning to face her, and his hands drift to her shoulders. "What exactly do they think we should be talking about?"

She lays her hands on his chest, fights to keep the nerves out of her voice. Does he really not get where this could go, or is he deliberately avoiding it?

"What happens next, I suppose," she says, and hates how tentative she sounds. This is what the last year has done to her, to the Olivia Pope who made and re-built and tore down worlds. It's a damn shame, she thinks regretfully.

He stares down at her, that very familiar furrow appearing between his eyebrows.

"We could do that later," he observes, and maybe she's imagining it, but there's a trace of suspicion in his tone. "Why did they really leave, with my daughter in tow?" (No, she definitely wasn't imagining it.)

In all the time they've been together, every scandal weathered and betrayal overcome, she's never once had to tell him in so many words what they could do with two or three hours on their own. Maybe she's losing her touch, and the thought almost makes her frantic.

"I guess...they were trying to give us some space…" she breathes, and she looks up from where she's got his coat in a death grip, and _oh_ , there it is, that _look_ , the one that turns her bones to water, makes her legs tremble under her. She hasn't lost her touch at all, and she doesn't even think about it, doesn't try to weigh all her options, just uses her grip on his coat to angle him over her, raises up to her toes so her mouth is right there.

"Plenty of space," she murmurs, lips a hairsbreadth away from his. He groans, deep in his throat, and then his mouth is on hers, hot and possessive, his hands streaking under her pretty pink wrap to curve fiercely over her waist. He hauls her even closer, never breaking his assault on her mouth, and when his thumbs brush the undersides of her breasts and one hand sneaks down to her hip, lower, she gasps loudly.

"Fitz," she pants, mindless, God, how does he _do_ this to her, turn her to putty with just one kiss?

"Fitz - bedroom," she orders. Shaking, she tries to take his hand to lead him down the hallway, meets with resounding defeat when he simply reaches down and picks her up, those big hands steady under her thighs. She tilts her head back, floating, and is rewarded by the scrape of his teeth along the column of her throat, over her collarbone.

"Which way?" he grates, and she has to rack her brains to think what he's talking about before it comes back to her. (This man, this man who utterly _destroys_ her.)

"Down the hall, to the - ahh, to the right," she whimpers, shameless, when his fingers slide higher, trace the firm curves of her ass. "Hurry, God, Fitz, _hurry_."

He doesn't waste any time, slams the door shut behind them and deposits her on the bed, leans over her with his arms bracketing her head. She knows that look, the hunger of it, the greed, and the heat of that look alone has nerves tingling over every inch of her skin.

"What do you want?" she whispers, boldly; it's a direct challenge, and when his eyebrows quirk up, she smirks at him, all teeth and come-and-get-me.

He stands up, picks up her left foot and slides off the little black flat she's wearing.

"What I want," he says, tone deceptively controlled, and he moves to the other foot, dropping her shoes to the floor, "what I want to is take off every inch of your clothes," he slides the wrap over her shoulders, pauses to skim a finger slowly along the strap of her camisole, "kiss you from head to toe, until you're begging me not to stop," she closes her eyes in desperate lust as his hands move to the waistband of her lounge pants, "and then make love to you for the first time in three hundred-" soft kisses, open-mouthed, on her hipbone, her inner thigh, her knee, "-three hundred and seventy-eight days. That, Olivia, is what. I. want."

She lifts her hands to the bottom of the camisole, tries to lift it for him, but his hands close warm and forbidding over hers.

"Don't," he whispers fiercely. "Let me. God, Liv," he pulls the soft fabric over her head, takes to her bra clasp with frenzied fingers, "we are never going to leave this bed. Never. I want you in every - " but he doesn't finish, because she cuts him off with a sharp kiss, all teeth and dominance and _now_ , ends it with a nip to his bottom lip that makes him moan, frantic, into her mouth.

" _Livvie_ ," he rasps, and she loves that she can still do this to him, after everything, that he still wants her this badly, always will. She attacks his shirt buttons with more ferocity than skill, unbuckles his pants with sweaty palms. Then, suddenly, she's hit with a wave of horrible apprehension, unfamiliar fear in this very familiar position; she's reminded all over again that she has had a baby since he saw her last, for God's sake, that she's still slim but that there are curves that weren't there before, that she is not the same Olivia Pope who left him over a year ago. What if he -

She never gets to finish the thought, because he kicks his shoes off, hooks his thumbs in her lacy underwear and tugs. There she is in front of him, bared in every possible way, and her heart goes into overdrive. He just _stands_ there, lingerie dangling incongruously from his fingers, and she cannot breathe.

"Liv," he breathes, and his eyes flutter shut, flutter open again, and there is such adoration on his face that she reaches for him without thinking. "You are - my God, I can't - there isn't - "

She cuts him off by grabbing his shirttails and tugging him over her, to her, kisses him again with the taste of victory in her mouth.

"I love you too," she murmurs and feels his body shudder at the words. "Fitz. I love you too."

And through the endless haze of what comes next, all she can think of is that finally, finally she is home.


	11. Tête-à-Tête

A/N: I thought for a while about how to play out the conversation in this chapter. Fitz and Liv are both such volatile characters, and I considered doing what the show would've no doubt done and letting them have a knock-down, drag-out fight. But it made me terribly sad to think of everything falling apart so quickly, so I succumbed to sentimentality and wrote more shameless fluff. (And yes, I stole the lines at the end of the chapter from 6x16. They turned me into a puddle of goo, so I couldn't resist. They're not mine, in case anyone feels like suing.)

Also, I wanted to point out the fact that, when it comes to making decisions, Fitz is completely under Olivia's thumb, and it's adorable. This was one of my favourite parts of Season 5, before everything went to hell in a handbasket-the fact that she would walk into the Oval, rattle off a list of things to do, and he would just smile at her and agree. Mostly because she was right, and a little bit because, you know, the whole love of his life thing. :)

Anyway, hope you enjoy-please drop a line in the review box and let me know what you think!

* * *

She loses track of time completely, could have been in his arms for ten minutes or a thousand, but when they finally come up for air, the light is slanting orange-dim through the curtains of her bedroom and she is deliciously exhausted, lungs burning and muscles sore.

He presses an absent-minded kiss into her shoulder blade, pulls her deeper into the curve of his body.

"What are you thinking?" he mutters, and his lips brush the edge of her ear just so - but they can't, they _can't_ do this again, not when her team could be coming back at any minute. She compromises, threads her fingers through his, rests them on her stomach and smiles to feel their joint weight there.

"That we need to get up, get dressed," she says, striving for practical. He scoffs at the notion.

"I thought I told you we were never getting out of this bed," he reminds her, and she had forgotten it was possible to smile like this, to feel this kind of happiness.

"You did," she agrees, and turns in his arms to lay her head on his chest, traces the dips and planes of muscle on his ribcage.

"You still haven't asked me," he says above her head, and she looks up at him, confused.

"Asked you what?"

"Why now. Why today. I have to admit, I'm a little surprised, Liv," although he doesn't sound surprised at all. She tries to contain her surprise at his tone, how light it is. They don't _do_ this, light and easy, not after something as cataclysmic as this. But, she thinks, if this is what he wants, she'll give it to him, let him play this out his way.

"Fine," she says, off-hand. "Why now? Why today? Tell me."

He winds a strand of hair around his finger, toys with it idly.

"It started when I got suspicious that my Chief of Staff had just vanished twice in a space of nine months," he says, shifts his thumb to stroke over the glossy coil. "And I got even more suspicious when, the second time she left, she went to her aunt's funeral in Arizona and stayed for five whole days. Particularly since the detective I had tailing her told me that her entire family was located in Ohio."

Liv bites her lip, feels the sting of guilt. So many lies, her lies, even if they came from Abby's mouth.

"But this last time? When she called in and said that she'd been summoned to an urgent meeting with the governor of Oregon and the head of the CDC regarding an outbreak of highly infectious bird flu along the Californian coastal area?" She stiffens, ready for defense, bracing herself for his righteous indignation.

He surprises her. "Now that was just...that was not your usual level of finesse, Liv. To be honest, I was disappointed."

Relieved, giddy with it, she tries not to giggle, she really does.

"I'd had a long week," she says, and buries her smile in his shoulder. He drops a kiss to her hair.

"I can imagine. At any rate, I called around and got a very discreet friend _not_ in B613 to track her phone. Imagine my surprise when my trusted, loyal, red-headed Chief of Staff was not actually in Salem, Oregon, attending a strategy session on bird flu, and instead was apparently spending her hard-working weekend in the middle of a tiny peninsula off the coast of Washington State."

She shifts her head enough so that she can see his eyes, presses a penitent kiss to his clavicle.

"That must have been very disconcerting," she says, and though the words are light her tone tries to apologize for all of it, everything. His arm tightens around her waist.

"Very." She hums, brushes her lips against his jaw, reminds him that she is here, with him, no more running. He continues, nudging her cheekbone with his chin. "So. I boarded Air Force One, called the Secretary of Defense to offer my sincere apologies for missing my briefing with him this morning - "

"You missed a briefing with the Secretary of Defense?" she interrupts, sitting up, but he pulls her back down, one hand smoothing over her hip.

"Shh, I'm not finished yet. I offered my sincere apologies, spent the longest five hours of my life aboard a plane, and came here to find you. And, as it turns out, my daughter. Our daughter." He pauses, gives it a beat. " _Now_ I'm finished."

She pushes up on one elbow, rests her hand on his cheek.

"You are," she breathes, and skims her fingers over his forehead, the bridge of his nose, his chin, "the most stubborn, intransigent, difficult, _ridiculous_ man I have ever known. And this, of all it, is almost certainly a terrible idea. But - " she breaks off to place the pad of her thumb over his lips, looks at him straight on, and she makes herself admit what she's never said to him before. "I can't imagine you any other way."

He smiles, that grin that lights up the room, any room, closes his eyes and wraps both arms around her, holds on tight.

"I love you too," he tells her, his mouth wandering over her face, those broad hands stroking her back like he will never, never get enough. "Christ, I love you. Olivia...sweet baby…"

She rises to meet him, and the thought courses through her that, for the first time since she walked out the doors of the Residence so many months ago, it's not cold anymore.

She is warm, from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet. Warm.

~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~

There's no denying that dinner is slightly awkward; thank God they managed to get cleaned up and appropriately attired before anyone came back, but the unease is palpable regardless. Her team regards him with a sort of wary respect, except for Abby, who refuses to make eye contact until finally Liv's had enough and walks into the living room. She almost loses her resolve then, because he's standing there with their daughter in his arms, murmuring something into the baby's ear with a serious expression on his face.

"What are you doing?" she asks, gently, and she doesn't know when she started doing gentle. It's a foreign feeling on her. He just smiles and presses a kiss to Mali's temple.

"We're having a conversation," he says, as if this is the most obvious thing in the world. She'd roll her eyes if it weren't so damn adorable.

"Fitz," she points out, fighting a smile, "she's only three months old."

He shrugs. "So it's a little one-sided. Give us time."

She looks at him, shakes her head. She knew, she's seen him with Teddy, she _knew_ how he would be, how much he would adore their daughter. She knew it would melt her from the inside out. She really doesn't know why she's surprised.

"You need to talk to Abby," she says, pushing herself to deal with the matter at hand. He raises an eyebrow at her, shifts the baby to his other side.

"And why is that?"

"Because she thinks you're going to fire her, Fitz. You need to tell her - "

He reaches out, snakes an arm around her waist.

"Tell her what, Liv? She knows I'm not firing her. She knows you won't let me. Why should I-"

"You know exactly why!" she says, pushing at him, irritated. He is being deliberately obtuse, and she knows he's doing it to drive her crazy. "She is your chief of staff. How do you expect to get anything done from here on in if you won't talk to her? If you won't trust her?"

"Trust her?" He plants one hand on her hip, holds her there. "I promised not to fire her, but how exactly am I supposed to trust the woman who snuck you out of the White House right under my nose, who _lied_ to me - "

She's on the verge of laying into him, losing her temper, when Mali waves her chubby fists and lets out a thoroughly angry wail. He stares at her, slightly panicked.

"She's hungry," Liv says crisply, reaching for her daughter. Mali settles into her mother's arms easily, snuffling, her tiny fist clenching and unclenching in the fabric of Liv's shirt.

"Go talk to Abby," she says over her shoulder, headed to the nursery to feed the baby. She hears his footsteps behind her and turns; he stands there, hands spread, pleading.

"No," she says firmly. "You are not coming with me. Go. Talk to her."

He sighs.

"You are very bossy."

She lets herself grin.

"And you love it. Now _go._ "

She can hear him chuckling all the way to the nursery.


	12. Handled

A/N: Thank you all yet again for your lovely reviews! (And favourites and follows.) Hearing such delightful feedback from you is beyond satisfying.

This chapter shifts backs into Quinn's point of view, partly because of the renewed emphasis on OPA, and partly because I have this poorly-hidden fascination with seeing Fitz and Liv from other people's vantage points. There's something about watching them from the outside that intrigues me, because they have such blind spots when it comes to each other (just as any couple does). And Quinn sees them a bit differently than most.

I also realize that this is a good bit less fluffy (and smutty) than the last couple of chapters, but I could not in good conscience just leave the two of them in bed all day long, tempting at that might be. There are a number of details to be figured out, and relationships to be re-worked, and the team's participation is key here. Furthermore, I think from what we've seen on the show that Olivia just naturally goes back to fixer mode after a particularly soul-baring experience, because it's her safe zone and she feels like it's something she can control. And Fitz, being Fitz, just naturally refuses to let her hide out there. (The beginning of 2x21 is an excellent example of this phenomenon.)

So...please read, enjoy, and review if you are so minded!

* * *

Quinn misses the days when their house was quiet. She misses the days when there were not Secret Service agents bunking in shifts on her living room floor. She misses the days when she and Huck and Abby were not trying to figure out how exactly to feed the nine extra people who randomly showed up _that morning_. Mostly, she misses the days when her boss and the President of the United States were not yelling at the tops of their lungs in a bedroom with absolutely no soundproofing.

"You are _not_ staying here, Livvie! I will not have it. You belong in Washington, that is where you have always belonged, and I am damn well not letting you keep my daughter, the daughter I just met _today_ , all the way across the damn country!"

"Where exactly am I supposed to go, Fitz? I don't have a business at the moment, or a house, or an apartment, or anywhere to keep a three-month-old - "

"For God's sake, Liv, I am the President of the United States. I can _get_ you a house. I can get you a damn castle if you want one. But I will not - "

"I am not taking charity from you!"

Quinn hears the sound of something slamming and thinks of the renter's deposit, forlornly.

" _Charity?_ I am her father, Liv, and your - "

"Yes, what exactly am I to you, Fitz? Let's clarify that, since you are no longer married and we are no longer together and I am not-"

"Not _together?_ After this afternoon, I thought it was pretty damn clear that we are some version of together. Or did that not mean anything, making you come four - no, wait, it was five - "

"Fitz!" they hear her hiss, scandalized. "What if they can hear you?"

There's a guilty silence.

Abby mutters "Jesus. I can't, I just can't." Quinn turns to look at her, and she's flushing to the roots of her hair.

"What?" Quinn says, and shrugs. "It's not like we didn't know."

"It's one thing to know, and another to hear your boss talking about - with your best friend - _mmph_. No." Abby shudders, and Quinn grins at her.

"Shhh." They both swivel to look at Huck, who tilts his head toward the bedroom.

"Liv…" His voice is lower now, entreating. "I love you. You know I love you. It nearly killed me to lose you, for a year - a goddamned _year_ , Liv. And now that there's my daughter, there's Amalia - you cannot expect me to walk away from you tomorrow morning and not know where you're going or when I'm going to see you again. You can't."

Abby picks at her cuticles, bobs her foot up and down.

"I know," and Liv sounds tired again. Quinn tenses at the sound, remembers those long, terrible days when she would stare at walls, at floors, at nothing at all. "I know. But we have to be careful about this. It's not - it's not just us anymore, not just our reputations to think of. She doesn't deserve - "

There's another long silence, and Quinn does _not_ want to imagine why.

"She deserves the whole world at her feet," he says at last, thickly, and the emotion in his voice is palpable. "I know you want to protect her, Liv, and so do I. I would never put her at risk, you know that. But I can't just go back to Washington without you, without both of you. I can't. Don't ask me to do that, Livvie. Please."

Even though she's not in the room, Quinn knows what Liv is doing, the look on her face, the one where she's calculating all the angles, assessing the risks.

"All right," she says, finally. "All right. But I need my team on this. All of them - Abby included. That's non-negotiable, Fitz."

His sigh echoes down the hallway.

"If that's the way you want it, Liv."

"It is."

"And you're not resigning. You are not even _mentioning_ the word resignation. Do you understand me?"

There is a long and very uncomfortable silence. The three of them stare fixedly at the floor.

"Fine. No resignation. I will see out my term."

"Good."

The door swings open.

"We have a client, people."

~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~

By and large, it's one of the more awkward meetings she's ever sat through, and she was a central part of the Defiance investigation, dealt with the revelation that her boss was the president's mistress, helped the man who destroyed her life get his kidnapped daughter back, and was a central figure in the very fun week during which Abby insisted on referring to her only as "Lyndsay" and/or "the Molotov Mistress." This one still ranks fairly high on the charts.

The president seems to be quietly seething, but he's not stupid, and he apparently realizes that Liv is not backing down on this. She is quiet, but firm, and when she takes control of the room, Quinn bites back a grin. This is _their_ Liv - a gladiator in a suit.

"So," she says, "our first priority is Mali's safety. For her own protection, no one can know her true identity. Especially not while Fitz is still in office. Her birth certificate doesn't name a father - "

She pauses for a moment, and Quinn watches in fascination as the president's jaw clenches visibly. He takes a deep breath in through his nose and nods, as if telling her to go on.

"That means we have options if anyone gets curious," Liv says dispassionately, and Abby tilts her head to the side, wheels turning.

"Sperm bank, ill-advised one-night stand...honestly, Liv, the one-night stand option is probably the easiest one to go with, there's no one who can check up on the story - "

The president cuts her off.

"No," and his voice is steely. "I am _not_ going to have my daughter referred to as the product of a one-night stand. No."

Liv purses her lips, but finally relents.

"All right, sperm bank, then," she says briskly. "And then, after your term is up, we can discuss legal adoption."

His eyebrows fly up. "Discuss? There is nothing to discuss, Liv. She's my daughter. The second I am out of the White House I am going to marry you, and I am going to be her father, legally and in every other way. No discussion."

They stare each other down, the sparks nearly visible, and Abby looks at a corner of the ceiling in mute supplication, as if begging some unseen force to come down and swoop her away. Quinn suppresses a grin.

"Where are you going to live in the meantime?" she interjects, before the two of them start tearing each other's eyes out again. Olivia swings around to face her, and Quinn might be imagining it, but there's a hint of gratitude in her face.

"That depends on what we do, as a team," she says, slowly. "We talked about reviving OPA this weekend, and I think it's possible-more than possible. But it's going to be hard at first, getting our clientele back, rebuilding our brand. I don't know...I don't know how much revenue we'll be pulling in those first few months. And I understand if you - "

Huck shakes his head. "We need to vote. All of us."

"For real this time?" Quinn asks, drily, and shrugs when Abby and Huck glare at her.

"For real," Liv says quietly, and for a minute it all drains away, the little living room with its banked fire and woven rugs, the president sitting right there, the tang of salt in the air, and she's back in D.C., standing outside Liv's office with her friends, her team, and the words echo in her head, _We never really vote_. It's different now, she thinks.

"I vote yes," Abby says, and her eyes shine suspiciously when she looks at Liv. "I may not be at OPA for a while yet, but I vote yes."

"Yes," Huck says, and both his eyes and Abby's bore into Quinn. She takes a minute, smiles a little.

"Yes," she says, finally. "I don't know where we're going from here, but yes. I'm in."

Liv exhales a tiny bit, her shoulders loosening, and Quinn and Abby share a look. _This is good_ , they telegraph wordlessly. This will get them back on track, give them a new start. Give her a new start.

"That's settled, then," Liv says briskly, and she lifts her chin decisively. "We'll need to look into office space - "

"I can do that," Quinn interjects, and Liv nods.

"And find somewhere to live. Quinn - " she breaks off and looks over at her, and there's such pleading in her eyes that it takes Quinn aback, because in her experience, Liv does not plead. Command, direct, order, yes, but not plead. "Will you…"

And then Quinn realizes what she's asking, the sacrifice she thinks she's demanding, and nearly laughs. Why bother to ask?

"Of course I will," she says off-hand. "For as long as you need."

The president turns to Liv, brow furrowed, and Liv smiles at him, runs her thumb over his hand beside hers on the couch.

"She's staying - with Mali, and me," she explains, and he doesn't exactly look pleased, but he doesn't protest either.

"So," Abby says brightly, deliberately chipper. "Where should we look for apartments?"


	13. Colloquy

A/N: So...this one is a good bit longer than any of the previous chapters, not necessarily by design. It just had to sort of write itself until it was played out.

One of the things I love best about the show is Shonda's habit of taking us in flashbacks to moments that fill in gaps in the story, or that give us a greater understanding of a character's choices and motivations. I tried that technique in this chapter to give a sense of the various conversations that have happened over the course of the evening, as well as the reasoning behind Huck and Quinn's worry over Olivia.

Two quick notes: first, I felt that it was important to finally see two team members talking to each other without Liv present. In the show itself, I think we often get the most profound insights about characters when they're being analyzed and discussed by someone else. Second, you may notice a pattern to Olivia's reactions in this chapter and those following. Although at first blush this may seem repetitive, I intend it more in the nature of concentric circles, if you will. Her reluctance to trust Fitz, to once again be vulnerable with him, takes a while to wear down. She's circling this new _thing_ between them, getting closer bit by bit, so that when she finally accepts this fully there's no desire to back out. That, to me, seemed very much in keeping with the nature of Olivia Pope.

Hope you enjoy - can't wait to hear what you think!

* * *

Sweet Mother of God, but she is worn out. Sighing, Quinn tips her head back against the wall, stretches her legs out in front of her, points her toes. Snippets of the past five hours float through her head, ruining the blessed, blessed silence.

" _You are not living in Prince William County, Olivia!" It booms off the walls, and all four of them turn as one to glare at him. "Sorry," he mutters, but they all know perfectly well it's because he almost woke the baby, not because he at all regrets what he said._

" _What's wrong with Prince William County?" she fires back, quieter than strictly necessary because she's being deliberately petty. He glares at her, rocks back slightly on his heels._

" _Because it is forty-five damn minutes away from the White House, that's why."_

 _She raises an eyebrow, and Quinn can_ feel _the collective groan from Abby and Huck. "It's quiet, in the country, several good schools, plenty of - "_

" _No." They both pause, and Quinn leaps into the sudden silence with alacrity._

" _I think I hear Mali," she says briskly, and they turn to stare at her. "Abby! We'd better go check on her. Come on." And then without further ado she grabs Abby's arm and hauls her out of there, just in time before a conversation about Adams-Morgan starts up, the president's deep voice protesting something vehemently._

 _(The president is in her living room. That fact is still taking some time to sink in.)_

" _Thank you," Abby murmurs as they head down the hallway, and Quinn grins in reply. "Wait - did you actually hear anything?"_

 _Quinn pauses for a moment outside the nursery. "Y'know, it's entirely possible that I did," and she tries to keep a straight face even when Abby chuckles._

 _Mali is, in fact, awake, gurgling and kicking at the mobile hanging over her crib. Quinn bought it for her the week she came home - found it in a booth at the market on the square. The little felt animals are hand-sewn, tiny grey seagulls and blue humpback whales and fat plovers. It makes her feel a bit steadier to know that, wherever they go from here, at least their girl will take a little of the island with her._

 _Abby stands beside the crib, absently running her finger along one of the whale's curved flippers._

" _We talked, you know," she says softly, and Quinn raises an eyebrow._

" _You and the president?"_

" _Yeah," she says, turns the whale over in her hand. "It was...weird. Good, but weird."_

 _Quinn plops down in the rocking chair next to the crib and massages a crick in her neck._

" _Weird how?"_

" _I don't know…" Abby's voice trails off. "We had - we'd become so close this past year. Not anything, you know, romantic, just...he needed me. With Liv gone, he needed someone so badly. He was falling apart, Quinn, and every day was a fresh hell, and he just needed someone who cared. And I was...I was there."_

 _She lets go of the whale, reaches down to rub Mali's foot instead._

" _I felt like such a traitor, every time I'd go in there and bring him another cup of coffee, pry the scotch out of his hand, make him eat something. They almost had to re-tailor his suits, Quinn, he lost so much weight. It was awful."_

 _She shakes her head, lets the corners of her mouth tug upwards when the baby coos at her._

" _I tried. I really tried. I kept telling him that it would be all right, that he'd find her, that he had a job to do and people counting on him, and eventually he started going through the motions, but that was all it was. And I kept waiting for the day to come when he'd figure it out, go back and look at the tapes one more time and find the time stamps that were missing, figure out that I was the only one who could've gotten her out of there without him noticing. He never did."_

 _She shifts her weight from one foot to the other, rolls her shoulders back._

" _So...anyway. I guess Liv made him come talk to me - "_

" _Of course she did," Quinn fills in, and they share a knowing look._

" _And he said he wasn't going to fire me, that he was angry, furious that I'd kept it all a secret from him, but that I - that I was loyal, just not to him."_

 _Quinn raises an eyebrow. "Interesting take."_

" _Yeah." She blows out a long breath. "I apologized. I've apologized a lot in this job, but I've never meant it quite as much as I did today. I offered to resign."_

 _There's a long pause, and Quinn is struck by how far she was willing to go to make this right. She_ knows _how much Abby loves being Chief of Staff, how damn good she is at her job, and the fact that she offered her resignation speaks to just how deep her remorse runs._

" _He said no?" she offers finally, and Abby turns from playing with the baby to look at her._

" _He said it was my choice. That he'd understand if I didn't want to come back, if it was too difficult for us to work together again, but that I was the only person in that place he trusted to take care of Olivia and his daughter. The only one he trusted to put them before everything else, even him."_

" _He said that? After everything?"_

 _She nods, swallows a little._

" _I used to worry, you know," she says quietly. "I worried he would take advantage of her, not see her for who she really is. That she was...expedient for him."_

 _For a few minutes, the quiet spools out in the little room, Mali's muted babbling the only sound._

" _Turns out I was wrong," Abby whispers. "I was wrong about him."_

 _Quinn can't help but agree. "We both were," she says, and the thought makes her more at peace than she's been since the Secret Service showed up on their doorstep._

 _Sometimes it's comforting to not be proven right._

Her legs are so stiff, from being curled up in that damned armchair for hours on end. She doesn't do well sitting still, hasn't for a long time. Not since the early days at OPA, when Huck taught her how to do the dirty work, the kind that required boots and jeans that fit like a second skin instead of a suit and heels. (Even then, she was bad at stakeouts, she remembers.)

She stretches them out again, massages her calf muscles, grimaces when she hears the joints in her knees pop. She doesn't know how Huck does it.

Her coffee's cold again, and she debates getting up for more, but decides against it. She really needs to sleep anyway, even if her brain won't turn off. Too much in too short a time, too many decisions already made and too many still to make.

 _The three of them huddle in the kitchen, pretending to take a time-out by the coffee maker when they're really hiding from the impending storm. They tacitly decided on this brilliant plan the second the word "visitation" left Liv's mouth and the president turned a dull red that signalled dangerously rising blood pressure. (This time Abby was the one who led the charge to abandon the field.)_

" _I am not staying in there while they hash out which house to buy in Georgetown and which school Mali's going to, even though she's only three months old, and I especially am not staying in there while they discuss how often I'm going to have to sneak him past the Secret Service and armed Marine guards to visit his secret girlfriend and their secret child!" she hisses fiercely. The coffeepot puffs and sputters. Huck just shrugs._

" _She's going to win anyway," he points out. Abby folds her arms over her chest, defensively._

" _But it's going to be my fault! Either way, it's going to be my fault. God, sometimes I hate my job," she mutters._

" _Listen!" Quinn jabs her in the side with an elbow and jerks her head towards the doorway._

" _Once every two to three_ months?!" _floats through the opening, and they can hear the strain in his voice from trying not to shout. "Are you crazy? Liv, this is - "_

" _Any more than that and someone is going to figure out!" she snaps back. They can hear the soft thud of her bare feet against the floor, pacing, pacing._

" _They will not figure out!" he retorts. "I'm divorced, there's no affair to cover up, no one's going to be interested in - "_

" _In you visiting your former mistress?" she spits at him, incredulous. "Who just happens to be back from an extended sabbatical and has a child that she can't really explain? How long is it going to take before some enterprising neighbor starts taking pictures of the president of the United States_ _ **at my house**_ _and sending them to BNC, or the_ Post _, or, God forbid,_ The Liberty Report _? Can you imagine the delight Sally would take in telling the world that - "_

" _You know I am not going to let that happen." The pacing stops, and Quinn can't take the curiosity anymore. Carefully, she peeks around the door, just enough to catch a glimpse. Liv's facing the front window, arms folded, eyes darting over the wooden slats of the blinds. She's looking for a way out, Quinn thinks, and fights the urge to go over there and shake some sense into her. There isn't an escape route here, not anymore. What was that ridiculous saying some coach in middle school used to tell her - the only way out is through? No anaesthetic, no running from the pain, just dive straight in and take it._

 _He walks up behind her, hands cupping her elbows gently, so gently, and Quinn sees the twinge flash across her face - that fathoms-deep fear that this will fall apart, that it will break her all over again, and that this time she will not be able to crazy-glue the pieces back together. He can't see it, though, bends down to press his lips to the top of her head._

" _Let me be there," he whispers, so quiet that Quinn can barely hear it, hidden away as she is. "Let me be there with you, with her. I know it can't be - I know I can't have it all, not yet. But let me be there for as much as I can. We'll be careful. You know we'll be careful. But if I lose this, Liv, what is the point of any of it? What is the point?"_

 _Her eyes squeeze shut, her mouth working, and Quinn can see the struggle in her face, to let him in, to let go of a little of that famous control. She finds herself clenching her own hands, the nails digging into her palms, because yes, it's her future on the line here too, but there's something older and deeper at work that she doesn't even fully comprehend, and her chest is tight with something like shared grief. She can feel Abby and Huck at her back, but none of them moves an inch._

" _Fitz," Liv whispers, and his arms slide around her, sheltering her, drawing her back against his chest like a bulwark. "If she gets hurt - if anyone leaks this - "_

 _Suddenly, something hardens in her stance, and she turns in his arms, pushes him away with her hands on his biceps, looks up at him with eyes that are calculating all the angles, gauging the options on the table._

" _Once a month," she says briskly, and he fights a smile, shakes his head a little, because he knows her._

" _All right. Once a month. Not on the same day, obviously."_

 _She gives him a look. "Obviously. At a place of my choosing. We can't do the house, not too often, people will start to notice. And never, ever at the Residence. It's too risky."_

 _He nods, reaches out to cup her shoulder in one hand._

" _All right."_

 _She nods quickly, laces the fingers of her left hand between those of the right as she thinks._

" _Abby will be the only point of contact," she continues, mapping it out, eyes trained on his shirtfront, but, Quinn knows from experience, not actually seeing it. "She'll find agents who are loyal to us, who won't say anything. That's important, finding the right people, if we don't - "_

 _He stops her with his hands cupping her face, those big hands that dwarf her delicate bones._

" _I know," he says softly, and she breaks off mid-stream, looks up at him as if just remembering that he's there. "I know, Liv. We will make it work. I promise we will. Just a year, it's just one more year, and then…"_

" _And then what?" she whispers, and there's an agony of hope in the way she turns her face into his hand. "Then what?"_

 _He smiles, and Quinn's never seen him look like that, not in the six years she's known him as more than just a figure on TV._

" _Then we build a life together, Livvie."_

 _She looks down, the silence spinning out for what seems like an eternity, and then she presses her lips together, one firm straight line._

" _Okay," she says._

 _Quinn looks back at Abby and Huck and the forgotten pot of coffee._

" _Okay," she echoes, and the three of them grin a little at each other. "Okay."_

There's a sound behind her, a slight squeak from the floorboards, and she turns to see Huck standing behind her. She smiles a little, gestures to the chair at her side.

"Can't sleep?" she asks, and he shrugs, takes a seat.

"Thinking," he says quietly, and she doesn't ask for more. She knows he'll say whatever he wants to say when he's ready.

They're silent for a while, nothing but the soft creaks and sighs of an old house settling at night. She glances over at the clock on the mantel, realizes afresh that it's well past 3:00 AM and she's going to be exhausted in the morning.

He shifts in his chair, rubs his hands on his thighs in a gesture she knows well. He's worried.

"What's wrong?" she asks, because that is what they do for each other now. He shakes his head, gets up, and goes over to the window, pulls open the wooden slats and looks out into the clear sky. She sighs, because every once in a while it would be nice if he'd just _say_ what was on his mind.

He swallows, shoves his his hands deep into his pants pockets.

"I don't want her to get hurt," he says, softly, and she bites her lips, closes her eyes. Somehow, when he does speak his mind, he always manages to say what she hasn't wanted to think.

"Me either," she manages, and he frowns out at the lawn, streaked with moonlight and shadow.

"She was bad...before," he says, and turns to look at her, that same patient, tired look. She nods.

"I know." She starts twisting her coffee cup around and around in her hands, because it gives her something to do and she very much wants something to do. "Believe me, I know. But - I think we have to give her this. Have to let her try. She loves him, you know? Like, the actually _in love_ with him, forever kind of thing. I didn't know if it existed, honestly, but I guess it does. And he - "

"He doesn't know." The words are low and ferocious, a dog growling at his master's feet. "He doesn't know how badly he hurts her, he never knows, because she never tells him. She won't. But if he does it again, now, with Mali - "

He breaks off, but they don't need the next words said out loud. Neither one of them wants to imagine what might happen if this goes south with a child (their child) involved.

"He loves her," she says finally, and she knows in her gut that it's true. "He does. He protects her. I mean, not like we can, obviously, but he does. He went to war for her, for God's sake, put his presidency on the line until she was safely home. He doesn't ever _want_ to hurt her."

Huck looks at her grimly. "That doesn't mean he won't."

She can't argue with that one. She'd like to believe in fairytale love and happily ever afters, really she would, but that all went up in smoke the day Lindsay Dwyer disappeared. Love like this, it's an involuntary weakness, and she's too smart to not know that weakness can cost far more than any of them bargained for.

Setting the coffee cup down with a sharp click, she huffs out a breath, leans back, lets her vertebrae stretch and pop.

"We have to take the chance," she says at last. "We have to let her take the chance. And, if this goes south…"

"We'll be there," he says without blinking. _Over a cliff._

"Exactly. We'll be there."

She nods sharply and stands, picks up her coffee cup to rinse it out in the sink - tries not to think of what comes next. She's too tired for this.

 _They've hashed it all out, where to live, how to make this insanity work, and it's late. Everyone else has headed off to bed, and it's just the three of them left in the room - Liv, the president, and her. Silently, Liv turns and gives him a look, tells him without words that she needs a minute, and he nods quietly and walks down the hallway. Turning back, Liv looks at her, eyes too bright with things she can't find the words to say, and Quinn feels a smile, a real one, stretch across her face._

" _It's okay," she says, and Liv takes her hand, squeezes hard. The sensation reminds both of them of the long hours in that stark delivery room, pain and fear and Quinn's hand wrung white and numb but there, always there._

" _You don't have to - " Liv starts, and Quinn presses her thumb across Liv's fingers firmly._

" _I know I don't have to," she says. "But we're in this. You and me. We've been in this for a year now. I have not stopped being in this, not now, not ever."_

 _Liv takes in a breath, bites her lip. She hates this, Quinn knows she hates this, the vulnerability, the fear._

" _Look," she says, watching Liv's hooded eyes, "we'll keep her safe. All of us. We'll keep her safe. Whatever it takes, no matter who it is - we'll take care of her. You don't need to question that. Ever."_

" _I know," Liv whispers, and Quinn can tell she's fighting tears. "I know. It's just - "_

" _Freaking terrifying. I know. But maybe - " She stops herself, and then decides that if she's in for a penny, might as well go all the way._

" _Maybe this is the right move. The right choice. Not the smart one, maybe, but the right one."_

 _She looks up, a frown line working itself in between her brows._

" _We always make the smart choice, though," she argues, and Quinn grins, wide and a little reckless._

" _Not this time."_

 _And when Liv reaches down and clenches her hand one last time, she knows that, for better or for worse, they're agreed._

Looking down at the water swirling in the bottom of her mug, she hopes that for once she's wrong. That for once the cynicism that has leached into all her cracks and crevices is unwarranted, that for once it will be okay. That, just once, they will get a chance at happy. _Liv_ will get a chance at happy.

God knows they deserve this one.

* * *

P.S. Bonus points if you get the smart choice vs. right choice reference. :)


	14. Conciliare

A/N: Sorry for the delay in updates, y'all; I've been on vacation, and Internet access has been somewhat sporadic. Thanks again for all your lovely reviews - they absolutely make my day!

So...a couple of things about this chapter. First of all, **the rating shifts to mildly mature here**. Be warned. If that's not your thing, feel free to skip the middle of this chapter. Second, going back to the concentric circles thing I mentioned a chapter or two ago...this chapter is about Olivia slowly circling her way in, painstakingly finding her way to centre. To Fitz. One of the things I love best about Olivia (and one of the things that frustrates me most) is that she always takes a minute before she decides something big about relationships. She can make snap decisions, rely on her famous gut, until her whole heart is on the line, and then she needs a minute. This chapter, then, is her taking a minute and making her decision with everything she has - heart, body, soul.

Here's to Liv _finally_ letting herself go - so please read, enjoy, and let me know what you think!

* * *

She sits on the steps of the back patio, coffee mug warm in her hands, knees curled up to her chest. It's chilly out here, and she's grateful for the heavy sweater wrapped around her. The tendrils of grey fog that snake over the ground swirl around her feet, and she shivers a little. She misses his warmth.

Slowly, she takes a sip of coffee, relishes the smoky heat. She didn't drink coffee much before, mostly tea, but she's discovered that having a newborn can force even the formidable Olivia Pope to seek out new and improved sources of caffeine. Quinn laughs at her for it, tells her that they always knew they'd win her over to their side.

Another shiver ripples over her skin, and she leans her head against the rough wooden railing of the steps. Last night was...she doesn't have the words yet for last night. She had almost forgotten what it was like when they were together, how he makes her forget good sense and reason and the fears that cling to her with biting fingers, how she loses herself in him. It used to terrify her, being lost in him. She feared never finding herself again, never knowing herself again without him, and to be so dependent on him, on anyone, for that kind of happiness filled her with an unimaginable dread.

She doesn't know when exactly that changed over the past year, whether it was the intolerable ache of missing him, or perhaps the realisation that he is no longer the only person who has this kind of hold on her. She thinks it might have been the day she held her daughter in her arms, looked into his eyes in that tiny, wrinkled face, felt devotion and terror swamp her in equal measure at that first furious cry. Her baby girl, so tiny, so utterly defenseless, and she knew in those first few moments that she would do anything, anything at all, set the entire world on fire and watch it burn for the sake of her child. In the months since, watching Mali grow, learning her patterns, seeing the glimmerings of her personality begin to peek through, she can already see bits of herself, bits of Fitz. And every time she has looked into those blue eyes, the exact shade of his, she's felt a tug in the pit of her stomach, a traitorous longing for him that she can't quite force away.

She thinks back to the moment he first took his daughter in his arms, those matching shades of blue gazing at each other for the first time, and how even through her fear it felt _right_ , that sharp snick of puzzle pieces fitting together, of perfect alignment, mathematically precise. All through the whirlwind of the past day - has it only been a day, she thinks, not even twenty-four hours since he walked through her front door? Impossible - she has felt that rightness, in her gut, in her bones, and she no longer has the strength to deny it. And now...now she's going home, carving out a space for herself, her daughter (their daughter). Somehow finding a way to make it work.

~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~

Her mind goes back to hours before, to both of them fighting sleep, not willing to close their eyes and waste a second of precious time. The weight of his body over hers, the tenderness of his hands stroking, teasing, the sweetness of his smile when he kissed her. If the afternoon had been about rediscovery, the hot rush of desire, frantic and desperate and filled with need, last night was about deliberation - steady, measured, love swelling up in great golden waves, pulling them under, yearning pressing heavy into their lungs. His words float back to her from years ago - "I cannot breathe, without you," and her heart clenches a little.

He'd whispered something similar last night, in the wee hours when the darkness was thick and impenetrable and she could hardly tell where she ended and he began. He lay on his back; she had curled herself around him, her head on his shoulder, their legs tangled, his arms steady around her. Their chests rise and fall, the sheen of sweat on their skin cooling in the night air, hearts still pounding from the exertion of moments earlier.

"I couldn't breathe," he whispers into her hair, and it's so soft she almost thinks she imagined it. She closes her eyes, shifts a little closer. "This whole year, I couldn't breathe. I thought I'd suffocate, every time I called you and you didn't pick up."

She takes a deep breath, shaky. She knew she couldn't run from this, from the stark evidence of his pain, but it still shocks her, the tremble in her stomach, the clench of misery in her gut.

"I couldn't breathe either," she whispers back, burying the words in his chest, half-wishing that they'll be absorbed there. "I saw you once, on TV, at the doctor's office. I - " She cuts herself off, can't bring herself to tell him how bad it was, how terribly she went to pieces. It's too much of herself to surrender, even now.

"What happened?" he asks gently, and his fingers sliding through her hair give her the resolve to continue.

"I lost it," she says, flat. "I fell apart. That's why Abby came out here in April, because I fell apart and Quinn didn't know what to do to fix me. Nobody could fix me."

His arm tightens around her, pulling her closer still.

"Livvie…" he murmurs, and the sorrow in his voice claws at her. So much pain they've caused each other over the years, and she has to believe that there's something here that's worth it. That from that first moment in the hallway of his campaign offices to this, they have something worth fighting for.

She pushes up on her elbow, looks down at his face, barely visible in the faint light filtering in from the street.

"I couldn't breathe without you either," she tells him again, and she can see even in the dimness the way his eyes widen, taking in the depth of this admission. She's never said it before, has steadfastly refused to say it, and he knows what it's costing her to say it now. "Fitz. I - I wanted you there. In that delivery room. I wanted you with me. I kept telling Quinn that I had to call you, that I had to let you know. I didn't...I couldn't…"

She stops when she sees his chest rise and fall sharply, and realises he's trying not to cry.

"Fitz..." she breathes, reaches for him, because in the safe darkness, hidden away from everything that could and will go wrong, she can afford to soften. She can afford to let him in. She leans over, kisses him softly, sweetly, every bit of her soul bared to him in that moment, and he pulls her to him fiercely, lets her weigh him down, anchor him to the bed.

"Don't ever make me go through that again," he mutters in her ear, a demand that comes out as a plea, and she hears the echo. _Don't ever leave me like that again. I almost died without you._ "Don't make us go through that again."

She's made very few promises to him over the years, because she is Olivia Pope and she does not break her promises, ever. It's in her still, that reluctance twined around muscle, rooted in bone, to never promise that which she cannot keep.

This, though, this she thinks she can give to him.

"I won't," she vows, and lays her head in the curve between his shoulder and neck, clings to him in that moment with everything she has.

Some things are not meant to stay broken.

~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~

They sleep for a few hours, the exhaustion of the day finally catching up to them, and she wakes to find the bed cold and empty. Down the hall, she can hear the faint sound of water running, and she gets up, shrugs on a robe, and pads across the cold floorboards to find him.

When she slips into the little bathroom-Quinn has had occasion to yell at Huck multiple times over the past year for finding two women and a baby a house with a single, small bathroom-all she can see at first is steam, swirling thick and white. She can hear him humming softly, that husky baritone low under the thrum of the falling water, and the sound makes her smile. She remembers it from the first few halcyon days in the White House, before everything fell apart, walking into that lavishly tiled bathroom in the Residence and hearing his humming echoing off the walls. He's happy, she thinks. Happy, even with separation looming again in the next few hours.

Without thinking, she slides off her robe, reaches for the handle of the shower door. If this is the last time they'll see each other for a month or more, she wants to make it something to remember.

He doesn't notice right away, busy rubbing her soap over his broad chest, and she grins behind his back, silent and predatory. Slowly, sinuously, she slides her hand over his shoulderblades, her smile widening sharply when he hisses in surprise; she runs her fingers through the streaks of soap on his back and then lower, lower, until he groans with pleasure.

"Mmm... _Livvie_ ," he gasps when her other hand snakes around him to slide over his abdomen, when she runs it teasingly over the crease between stomach and thigh. He curses softly and plants both hands on the wall, every muscle ridged and taut.

She chuckles, low in her throat, revels in the power of having him aching with want under her fingertips, loves the fact that he still wants her this badly, will always want her this badly. Biting her lip, she slyly reaches down to take him in her hand, strokes until he's panting, molds herself to his back so he can feel every curve.

Because she can - and, truth be told, because she enjoys the rush of denying him what he wants - she stops moving, then shrugs and pulls away, satisfaction in the corners of her smile. That's what breaks him, that deliberate cruelty. Before she knows it, he has whirled around, pinned her to the adjoining wall with something like a low growl, and she refuses to admit how fast the lust blooms in her belly at the sound.

"You want to tease, Livvie?" he mutters, his teeth playing with the edge of her ear, because he knows damn well that it will drive her crazy. His breath is still coming fast, and she looks up at him, eyes slitted, mouth pouting.

"Who's teasing?" she says, a challenge, and then she's got both hands on his ass, pulling him to her without hesitation or mercy. He changes the game, puts his mouth on her, hot and devouring, burning her neck, her collarbone, her breast, his teeth leaving half-moon marks in the soft flesh of shoulder, stomach, thighs. She can't breathe again, but it's good, this vice that clamps around her chest, the pressure of reckless want that sends sparks fizzing through her blood. She keeps up the pretense of challenge for as long as she can, tries to bite back the moans when those long fingers slip into her, when his body presses hers into the tile and she can feel the fever in his touch. It's not until he's on his knees, though, his mouth buried between her legs and her hands tangled in his hair, his clever tongue making stars and galaxies burst behind her eyelids, that she is forced to admit that perhaps she isn't winning this one after all.

He stands up slowly, the vein in his neck throbbing, face flushed from the heat of the water and the heat of her, and he brackets his arms around her head, moves in until she's trapped.

"Still playing, Liv?" he rumbles, and he leans in, kisses her long and deep, so she can taste herself on his tongue. She whimpers - actually _whimpers_ \- and he smirks, so pleased with himself she could cheerfully slap him.

"That's what I thought," he says, triumphant, but she forgets about wiping that annoyingly overconfident smirk off his face when he lifts her, holds her fast against the grid of the tile, and nestles his mouth into the curve of her neck.

"Fitz," she moans, and he mumbles something garbled into the softness of her shoulder. "Fitz, _now_." She doesn't have to ask twice, and when he slides into her, slow and intent, cups the back of her hand in one hand, she closes her eyes and gives herself over to him, to the rising tide that steals her breath and her voice and her sanity all in one. She loses track of everything except him, the way he responds to her touch and her wordless half-cries and the tensing of her muscles, the way he mercilessly drives her towards the edge and then, because he knows her so well, holds her there, waiting.

She lifts her lids, looks up at him through wet lashes. "I missed you," she says, low, lets the words sink in while he trembles. "God, how I missed you."

It drives him over that precipice, taking her with him, until they're a jumbled, gasping mess, leaning against the shower wall. She knows she left nail marks scored into his back, a purple crescent on his chest from when she muffled her cries as she came, and she can feel the bruises starting from where he gripped too tight, held her too closely. She doesn't mind - she wants the tangible reminders that they were here, that they held on, that neither one of them was willing to let go.

When they can move again on legs that have treacherously turned to jelly, she smiles at him, no seduction, just simple. (They can be simple, just for now.)

"Hi," she whispers, and she sees the memory light in his eyes, the crinkling at the corners.

"Hi," he whispers back.

~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~

She leans in the doorway of the nursery, wrapped in her robe, rubbing a towel through her hair. He's standing there, over the crib, watching their daughter sleep, and something tugs deep inside her, a strange, honeyed ache behind her ribs. She remembers on the campaign trail, nearly a decade ago, watching him toss a baby in the air, laughing out loud at the expression of delight on its chubby face. She'd felt it then, just a faint glimmer of what sweeps through her now, and she clenches her fist on the collar of her robe to keep from pressing it to her heart.

He turns and smiles, that crooked half-smile that means he's trying too hard, and she moves toward him instinctively. What has happened to her, she wonders, that she can't seem to override that inherent need to comfort him? He's breaching all her defenses at once, and she can't seem to do a damn thing about it.

She pushes it to the back of her mind, refuses to dwell on it, because he's carefully stroking Mali's plump little hand, curled above the blanket, and she can see him swallow hard.

"I don't want to wake her," he whispers, and she sighs, puts a hand on his arm.

"She's your daughter, Fitz," she murmurs, "and you won't get to see her for at least a month, maybe longer. Pick her up."

He nods and reaches into the crib, picks up his baby in her yellow footie pajamas, the soft dark curls going wild, and snuggles her against his chest. She blinks owlishly, the tiny eyebrows pulling together in a frown that Olivia knows like her own heartbeat, and makes a soft sound as she drops her head to his shoulder and plants her little hand squarely on Fitz's cheek.

"Morning, sweetheart," he murmurs to her, and she gurgles in response, pats his cheek and babbles in her own incomprehensible language. He keeps talking, soft nonsense against her ear, and suddenly, she leans back, grins wide and toothlessly, grabs his face with both her little hands and laughs, a happy chuckle that rings through the quiet room. Watching helplessly beside him, Olivia feels her voice get caught in something between a laugh and a half-choked sob.

"What?" he says, wheeling to face her, looking stricken when he sees her face. She tries to smile and fails miserably.

"Liv, what is it?" he asks, strained, his hands automatically moving to hold the baby closer. She blinks hard and looks at the grey light seeping through the slats of the window blinds.

"Nothing," she whispers, bites the inside of her cheek to keep the tears at bay. "It's just - she doesn't do that with anyone but me. Not even Quinn. She only laughs like that for me."

He stares at her, breathing shakily, and she tries to smile again, almost manages it this time.

"She knows you," she says, and reaches up to rub Mali's back. "It's like she's always known you."

He closes his eyes, rests his cheek against Mali's curls, and sways back and forth with her, swamped with the same wave of emotion.

"I don't want to go," he says softly, and she nods, slides her arm around his waist and settles her head on his chest. She can't imagine how domestic this looks, how _normal_ , and suddenly she doesn't care.

"I don't want you to either," she says against his shirt buttons, and when he lifts his head, she knows without seeing it the look he's giving, that raised eyebrow and the quirk of the mouth that says he's both touched and amused.

"A year, Livvie. A whole year. How am I supposed to make it through another year?" he asks her on a long sigh, and she shakes her head. She doesn't want to have the answers to those questions, not anymore.

But she's still Olivia Pope, so she leans back, looks up at him, and forces herself to say it anyway. "Because you're the President of the United States. Because you don't get to be normal, not yet. Because if you don't, this will blow up in all our faces. Hers included. You know that."

Her tone is firm, verging on dispassionate, the tone of a fixer, a professional, but the way she cups his cheek is not. Nor is the pleading in her eyes.

"I know," he says, and she hates how defeated he sounds. "I know, there's no other way."

She fans her thumb across the laugh lines at the corner of his eye.

"We aren't going anywhere. Go be president. Carry out your last year the way you always wanted to. Make a difference." And then, because one new beginning deserves the memory of another, "Go be the man I voted for."

He smiles at that, pulls her into him and presses his lips to her damp curls, holds them both like he's pressing the memory into his skin, imprinting it on every cell. She drops her head to his shoulder, breathes him in, feels the softness of her baby against her cheek and the gentle brush of his mouth against her forehead, and she thinks, not for the first time, that this job demands too high a price.

She cannot bear to let him go.

~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~f~

The memory warms her, more than the rapidly cooling cup of coffee in her hands, and she sets it down beside her, drops her head to her knees for a moment. She should be exhausted, but there's a gnawing at the edge of her chest, a hollowness, threadbare and thin. Yawning, she rubs her thumb against the opposite palm, thinks of all the planning and preparation and details that have to be worked out over the next few weeks. She's got this, she thinks, she's on top of it, everything will be handled. All the same, she can't quite make herself get up just yet. Just a few more minutes, to sit here in the chill and the fog and remember that last kiss in the doorway, the far too familiar sensation of goodbye.

It terrifies her, but she can't seem to stop herself.

She misses him.


	15. Certitude

A/N: Y'all, I want to apologize for the insane amount of time that has passed since I've updated this story. I never intended for this to take so long, but between some family crises and work getting insanely busy, I haven't had much time or energy to write. But I did finally get this last chapter done, and I wanted to finish out the story the way I always planned to.

This is in fact the last chapter, where I try to tie together the loose ends left after Chapter 14 and bring everything full circle. I have had an incredibly fun time writing and sharing this fic, and I want to thank all of you who reviewed, favourited, or followed this story. It's been wonderful to play around with some of my favourite characters, and your support and encouragement made it even better. I appreciate you more than I can say.

I am toying with some ideas for a sequel, set during the last year of Fitz's presidency, but nothing's set in stone yet. With things so busy and hectic right now, I don't want to make any promises just yet...but I'm hoping it will come to fruition!

Once again-thank you so, so very much, and I hope you enjoy this last bit!

* * *

She stands on the tarmac, the stiff breeze whipping at her hair, pulling at her scarf with chilly fingers. Behind her, the private plane hums, a warning that they're ready, that it's time. Nevertheless, she stands still.

Huck clears his throat and turns, headed for the steps. Quinn's standing at the top, Mali in her arms. Olivia can see the flash of red from her baby's coat as Mali squirms, ready to go, ready to move. Everybody seems to be ready but her.

"Just...just a minute," she says, and Huck pauses at the edge of the steps, nods. She waits until he's in the plane before she digs her phone out of her bag.

He picks up after the third ring.

"Liv?" he says, and she can hear the worry in his voice. She takes a deep breath, fidgets with the fringed end of her scarf.

"Hi," she answers softly. She can hear him shift in his chair, imagines him turning towards the window, shutting out the bustle around him.

"Are you all right?" She nods before she remembers that she can't see him.

"Yes. We're fine. About to leave, actually."

"Good. Good. These last few weeks-"

She huffs out a mirthless little laugh. "I know."

"Let me know when you get to Dulles," he says, and it's so damn _normal_ that she can hardly believe it.

"You can't come to the house," she replies for what feels like the hundredth time. "Not yet." He mutters something mutinous, and she steels herself. "We talked about this."

"I know, Liv. I know. I just-"

There's a pause, jagged at the edges, and her chest clenches. Her eyes are smarting; she tells herself it's the wind.

"Livvie?" he says, so softly, and she wonders again if this is a mistake, if the whole thing is insane. If she should just stop it, now, before they go back down the rabbit hole all over again. "Livvie, just tell me - "

She cuts him off.

"I listened to them."

"What?"

"I listened to them. The voicemails. All of them."

She can hear the breath leave his body.

"Liv...I…"

She clutches the phone so hard her fingers start to go numb.

"They were so...you were…"

He makes a choked sort of sound.

"You shouldn't have listened to those, Liv. Not now. What possible - "

"I owed you that much!" she snaps, angry, though she can't decide why or at whom. "Three hundred and twenty-four voicemails, Fitz. Every single day until - "

She breaks off.

" - until I couldn't leave anymore," he finishes for her. "I remember that day."

The wind is cold, too cold, and she can feel Quinn and Huck's stares on the back of her neck.

"I wanted to run. This morning, I wanted to run."

He stands up - she knows, because she can hear the sharp thud of his chair as it rolls against the desk. "Olivia. Olivia, do not tell me - you cannot be - "

"I'm not doing it." He takes a shaky breath, and she bites her lip, hard, to keep it from trembling. "I can't. Even if I wanted to. I can't anymore."

"You're not doing what? Liv, I - " He sounds so desperate, so shaken, and she wishes so badly she could touch him. They've always made more sense face to face.

"I'm not running from you," she clarifies, and he starts breathing again. "I'm not, anymore, I - I can't. All those voicemails…" She trails off, closes her eyes. "I just called to tell you that...we're coming home."

In the background, she can hear a door slam and his voice, muffled and fierce. _"Out!"_

"You're busy," she says, and stares out at the grey clouds overhead.

"Not when I'm talking to you."

"You're busy," she says again. "You're the leader of the free world. You need to get off the phone with your = "

"Fiancée," he interjects smoothly, and she almost laughs before she catches herself.

"We are not engaged, Fitz."

"That is definitely not my fault. By my count, I've asked you a grand total of - "

"Fitz!" she reproves, and she doesn't know how, but the misery, the tension of a few moments ago seems to have mostly dissipated. He sneaks under her skin better these days, she thinks. She should resent it more.

"All right," he says, and she can tell he's grinning. "Fine. I will do as you say and go be the leader of the free world. Just...come home, okay?"

She doesn't know what to think with him, how to push him away anymore. She had gotten so good at pushing him away, and then these last few weeks she hasn't been, she's finally let him in, and it's been...disconcerting. She feels off-kilter, the world that's been spinning so precariously for so long suddenly balanced. Unnerving.

"I'll call you when we get to Dulles," she offers, _so normal_ , and she can all but see him smile, that sweet smile that almost gives him dimples.

"Safe flight, Livvie." She hangs up, before he can say _I love you_ or _Be careful_ or any one of the other things that normal couples say to each other. She's not ready for that much normal, not yet.

Slowly, she slips her phone into her pocket, rubs her cramped fingers absent-mindedly. She'll miss this place, the silences, the grey sea mists, the wide expanse of ocean and sky. Her little blue house with pansies outside the door. No more waiting, though. It's time.

The wind picks up, and she moves towards the steps.

It's time to go home.


End file.
